42 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



use, a knowledge of the quantity of water which now runs to the sea will 

 serve as a guide to the opportunities for new and later appropriations. But 

 so long as the nature of an appropriation is unsettled, so long will records 

 of claims to water be a constant temptation to revive old projects and vitalize 

 dead rights, with a resulting increase in litigation and controversy over 

 streams. 



RrPARIAN BIGHTS. 



The perplexities of water users have been increased in California by 

 the recognition of riparian rights, which g-ive to any landowner along the 

 margin of a stream the right to have its water flow past his land unimpaired 

 in quality and undiminished in volume, or, at least, it renders uncertain the 

 extent to which the volume may be diminished. This law is borrowed from 

 rainy, foggy England, where it has a climatic fitness, because civilization 

 in that country began with the draining of bogs and marshes, and the chief 

 utility of rivers is to drain the w^ater off the land; but the doctrine has no 

 place in a country where all the water streams carry should be diverted 

 and used. It has been abrogated in all the States wholly within the arid 

 region. Not only has the doctrine been abrogated in Colorado, Wyoming, 

 Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and the Territories of Arizona and New 

 Mexico, but in the provinces of Victoria and New South Wales in Australia 

 and the Northwest TeiTitories of Canada. All these provinces are colonies 

 of Great Britain, where regard for tlie time-honored precedents of the mother 

 country would supposedly be greater than in the United States. The abro- 

 gation of this doctrine in these provinces was not made until after a careful 

 study of irrigation in both Europe and America. The commissioner who 

 made the investigation for the Canadian government, in a recent paper 

 describing the Canadian code of irrigation laws, says: ^ "It recognizes as a 

 foundation principle that only by the absolute repeal of the common law of 

 riparian rights can the use of water for irrigation be successfully introduced." 

 The same view is held in the States and Territories of this country where 

 the doctrine has been set aside. The supreme court of Utah, in one of the 

 earliest decisions on this question, used the following argument in support 

 of its action: 



Kijiarian rights have never been recognized in this Territory, or in any State or Territory where 

 irrigation is^ nfcessary, f(jr the appropriation of water for the purpose of irrigation is entirely and 

 unavoidably in t(jnflict with the common-law doctrine of riparian proprietorship. If that had been 



' J. S. Dennis, deputy commissioner of public works, Canada. U. S. Dept. of Agr., Office of Experi- 

 ment Stations Bui. 8(i. 



