THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



73 



U. S. COURT SUSTAINS THE WATER USERS 



Federal Project Settlers Win Most Notable Victory; Get Court Rights. 



WATER USERS on the Federal irrigation 

 projects are American citizens. They have 

 rights just like any other citizens. 



The Reclamation Service is amenable to the 

 courts if it does illegal acts or seeks to injure a 

 settler. 



The acts and decisions of the Secretary of the 

 Interior are not final like those of the Czar of 

 Russia. 



The contract between the government and a 

 Water Users' Association is binding and entitled 

 to respect, no matter how displeasing such contract 

 may be to a bureaucracy that is trying 

 to cover up mistakes, costing $40,000,- 

 000 or more, by assessing new charges 

 upon the settlers on the projects. 



These points and a number of 

 others are made by Judge Sanborn of 

 the United States circuit court of ap- 

 peals in an opinion, just handed down, 

 in which he refuses to order the dis- 

 trict court to vacate an injunction 

 restraining officers of the Reclamation 

 Service from cutting off water of 

 settlers who refused to pay excessive 

 operation and maintenance charges, or 

 evicting them from their homesteads. 

 The opinion is the most remarkable 

 victory ever won by the water, users. 

 It promises to prove of tremendous 



. . 



tion, who has just won a most 

 remarkable victory for settlers 

 on the Federal irrigation proj- 

 ects. 



O. E. Farnham, secretary of 

 the National Federation of Wa- 

 ter Users' Associations and at- 



value not only to the settlers on the ^"ft, 1 ^? &' & 

 Belle Fourche (S. D.) project, whose 

 Water Users' Association brought the 

 suit, but to settlers on every other 

 Federal irrigation project. 



The suit is being prosecuted by O. E. Farnham, 

 secretary of the National Federation of Water 

 Users' Associations and secretary and attorney of 

 the Belle Fourche association. He was assisted by 

 Chambers Kellar and James G. Stanley of Lead, 

 S. D. R. P. Stewart, United States district attor- 

 ney for South Dakota, and Ethelbert Ward and 

 A. R. Honnold, special counsel of the Reclamation 

 Service, represented the Service. 



Here are the big law points which Judge San- 

 born makes in his opinion : 



A corporation with which, as the representa- 



from their lands, and cancelling their water rights 

 and homestead rights because they fail to pay such 

 charges. 



The decisions of officers of an executive depart- 

 ment of the United States of questions of law are 

 not conclusive upon the courts. 



The questions whether or not the charges 

 alleged to be illegal and the acts and threatened 

 acts of executive officers to deprive the shareholders 

 of a Water Users' association of water and to cancel 

 their water rights and homestead rights for failure 

 to pay such charges, are questions of law which a 

 court of equity is empowered to deter- 

 mine in a suit of such an association 

 against such executive officers, al- 

 though the Secretary of the Interior or 

 other executive officers have already 

 decided them. 



A suit against executive officers of 

 the United States to enjoin them from 

 committing acts unauthorized by or in 

 violation of law to the irreparable in- 

 jury of the property rights of the 

 plaintiff is not a suit against the 

 United States, nor is it or the injunc- 

 tion sought objectionable, either on 

 the ground that they interfere with the 

 property or the possession of the 

 property of the United States, or on 

 the ground that they compel specific 

 performance of its contracts. 



Judge Sanborn's opinion, which 

 every water user should study care- 

 fully, follows in full : 



The appellant, Frank C. Magruder, 

 is the manager of the Belle Fourche project, and 

 the appellant, R. F. Walter, was the project engi- 

 neer and is the supervising engineer. They were 

 defendants below, and the plaintiff was the Belle 

 Fourche Valley Water Users' Association, a corpo- 

 ration organized under the laws of South Dakota to 

 represent and act for the holders of water rights 

 in the project, to collect the lawful dues from them 

 and to guarantee the payment of these dues. The 

 Belle Fourche project is a project for the storage 

 of water and the irrigation of land under the 

 Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, and the acts 



tive of its shareholders who are parties accepted by amendatory thereof. (32 Stat. Chap. 1093, page 



the United States as holders of water rights in a 

 project under the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, 

 32 Stat. Chap. 1093, page 388, the United States 

 makes a contract for the benefit of such share- 

 holders relative to the supply of water to and the 

 dues to be paid by the shareholders, and which 

 covenants in the contract to collect dues for the 

 United States and guarantees the payment thereof, 

 is a pioper party plaintiff in a suit to enjoin officers 

 of the United States from collecting unlawful 

 charges from the shareholders, turning the water 



388.) This is an appeal from an order refusing to 

 set aside a restraining order and granting an inter- 

 locutory injunction against the defendants forbid- 

 ding them to exact from holders of water rights in 

 the project charges alleged to be illegal and from 

 depriving them of the use of the water, of their 

 rights to the water and of their rights to their land 

 because they failed to pay such charges. 



The appellants assail the order on three 

 grounds that the association is not a proper party 

 plaintiff, that the court below had no power to 



