58 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



"BENEFICIAL USE' TO STOP BIG WATER WASTE 



"Use, beneficial use, is the only right to water 

 which an individual may acquire." This statement, 

 which is the kernel of an interesting article in the 

 Boise, Idaho, Statesman, written by Earl W. Bow- 

 man, applies to every district in the country. An 

 opinion delivered a few days ago by the attorney- 

 general of Texas carries the same import in connec- 

 tion with projects in that state. The article by Mr. 

 Bowman follows : 



The irrigation development of southern Idaho 

 will stop now if the principle involved in the re- 

 port of the irrigation law revision commission cov- 

 ering the Big Wood river and other projects is car- 

 ried to its ultimate conclusion. 



The commission, in its report upon these proj- 

 ects, has made a deplorable fundamental mistake. 

 Its recommendations touching these Carey act tracts 

 constitute a most grievous injustice not only to the 

 projects themselves but to the irrigation industry 

 as a whole as well. 



By advising area reduction in these instances 

 instead of duty increase or some plan of more effi- 

 cient application, the commission has advanced a 

 principle that conflicts with the constitutional pro- 

 vision that use, beneficial use, is the only right to 

 water which an individual may acquire. 



It has done more than that. It has shown that 

 it has failed utterly to grasp the more comprehen- 

 sive idea of complete irrigation development. It 

 has bound itself with the individualistic theory that 

 an irrigation right is a fixed title to a measured flow 

 regardless of the "necessity of subsequent enlarged 

 development." 



The finale of this can only be that vast areas 

 for which, under proper distribution and use, there 

 is ample water must ever remain arid, useless, des- 

 ert of no value to man or the state. 



The Snake river drainage provides an annual 

 run-off which may be used for irrigation sufficient 

 to give every acre of southern Idaho land that is 

 tillable an adequate supply. 



The problem is to ?o distribute and use that this 

 is all available. 



The simplest and, in the long run, the cheapest, 

 solution to the whole question of supply would be 

 the construction of the American Falls reservoir 

 jointly by the state and federal government and 

 then complete state administration of the entire 

 irrigation industry. Eventually that is what will 

 be done. 



In the meantime 50 per cent of the water appro- 

 priations of Idaho today are in excess of actual duty. 

 Fifty per cent of the water taken from the streams 

 of the state and diverted as private and corporate 

 rights never perform duty. 



The great drainage problems, such as that in 

 the Nampa-Meridian district, which is now requir- 

 ing an expenditure of three-quarters of a million 

 dollars, are the result, to a large extent, of excess 

 application of water, the direct result of the in- 

 ability of the soil to utilize the water applied and 

 make it do irrigation duty. 



Had the irrigationists of Boise valley used 

 water as it should have been used that district 

 would not be under the necessity of covering itself 

 with a blanket mortgage to get funds to dig ditches 

 to get rid of the water it persists in applying and 

 which it cannot possibly use beneficially. 



Knowledge of the duty of water and then an ad- 

 ministrative authority that will compel use and not 

 waste is what Idaho needs more than anything else 

 at just this time. 



It is as reprehensible, as unfair, as criminal, for 

 an irrigationist to permit water to waste through 

 the sub-formation of his field as it is to permit it 

 to run unused through the ditches on its surface. 



When he does that he steals, literally steals, 

 from other acres that have an equal right in natural 

 equity and constitutional guarantee with his own, 

 the water they must have to be reclaimed. When 

 he does that he stands between the state and its 

 proper development. No individual has a right, 

 morally or otherwise, to do this. Nor has he a 

 right to assume that God Almighty created water 

 for his ranch and his alone ! 



Yet that is precisely what the area reduction 

 instead of duty increase recommendation of the irri- 

 gation law revision commission predicates. 



A recommendation that fixes in the minds of 

 irrigationists the belief that they are possessed of 

 more than a right to beneficial use of water, that 

 they are entitled to an inch, five-eighths, a half or 

 any other specific volume of water per acre, save 

 the duty as that duty is determined by a competent 

 authority and not by the individual opinion, is 

 vicious in its trouble breeding proclivities. 



The thing the water users of Idaho will have 

 to learn is that water is not nor can it ever become 

 private property per se. They must be made to 

 understand that the waters of the state of Idaho 

 are the property of the state and that their use is 

 constitutionally declared (section 1, article 15), and 

 justly, too, to be "* * * A public use and subject 

 to the regulation and control of the state in the man- 

 ner prescribed by law." They must realize that 

 "First in time first in right" applies only to turn of 

 aoplication and not to duty, that (section 5, article 

 15, of the constitution) : "* * * Whenever the 

 supply of such water shall not be sufficient to meet 

 the demands of all those desiring to use the same, 

 priority of right shall be subject to such reasonable 

 limitations as to quantity of water used and times 

 of use as the legislature, having due regard both to 

 such priority of right and the necessities of those 

 subsequent in time of settlement or improvement, 

 may by law prescribe." 



No man in Idaho can hoard water can possess 

 himself of it and maintain that possession except 

 for actual beneficial use, and the state reserves the 

 right to say how much, when and in what manner 

 he shall use it. 



The equations of ignorance or selfishness, ac- 

 quired or inherent, in the individual compels the 

 necessity of this. When an individual is permitted 

 to determine the extent of his private use of public 



