WATER STORAGE ON SWEETWATER AND SAN JACINTO RIVERS. 375 



Schuj'ler, Fi-ank A. Kimball, and Warren C. Kimball. Doyle was the owner of a 

 tract of 51.38 acres of land that bordered on the Sweetwater stream bed for about 

 858 feet, nearly 2 miles below the Sweetwater Dam, and in the spring of 1889, a year 

 after the dam was completed, he brought the action, alleging that Sweetwater River 

 was a "nonnavigable, natural, and permanent water course or stream;" that his land 

 is riparian to the stream; that the company's dam was built in such a way and so 

 affixed to and embedded in the bed rock as to permanently obstruct the natural flow 

 of the waters of said river through and by the plaintifTs lands; that the company 

 had not condemned the plaintiff's riparian rights, and that it was intended to divert 

 the waters of the stream to lands chiefly owned by itself, not riparian to the stream, 

 under pretense that it is in charge of a public use; that the plaintitFs well, located 

 400 feet from the river, from which he was accustomed to pump water for irrigation, 

 would become drj' and had already' failed to such an extent as to cause him to lose 

 about one-half his usual orange and lemon crop, etc. He therefore asked for an 

 injunction against the continuance of the obstruction to the natural flow of Sweet- 

 water River. In other words, he wanted the dam destroyed. This dangerous action 

 was defeated only by the discovery and production by defendants of a deed bj- which 

 F. A. and W. C. Kimball, owners of the Rancho de la Nacion, on the 9th day of 

 June, 1869, conveyed all riparian rights and rights to water flowing in Sweetwater 

 River to the Kimball Brothers Water Company, a coi-poi-ation, by whom these 

 rights were in turn transferred to Lucius G. Pratt, trustee of The San Diego Land 

 and Town Company. This antedated the sale or deed of any of the lands within the 

 Rancho de la Nacion, including the lands of Doyle, and, therefore, as the defendant 

 corporation owned the riparian rights which the plaintiff Doyle relied upon to win 

 his case, he was nonsuited. 



The other similar case has recently occurred, and was decided in 1899 in the supe- 

 rior court of San Diego County in favor of the defendant corporation, the Southern 

 California Mountain Water Company. This company is owner of the Lower Otay Dam, 

 located on Otay Creek, the next adjoining stream parallel to the Sweetwater on the 

 south. This and the Sweetwater Dam are but 5 miles apart. The case is an interesting 

 one as illustrating the dangerous possibilities which riparian rights, held in adverse 

 ownership, ma}' possess in threatening the destruction of storage reservoirs. The 

 Ota}' is more " flash}-" and uncertain in its flow than the Sweetwater, and though it 

 sometimes carries a large flood flow at other periods, it may not flow at all for several 

 years at a time. It was therefore to be expected that, as it was pi-actically useless 

 without storage, it would be the last place in which the riparian-right doctrine would 

 be asserted to impede or destroy an enterprise of such great public utility and neces- 

 sity as that of an impounding reservoir. The action was filed April 9, 1899, and 

 was entitled Michael Bauers et al. v. Southern California Mountain Water Company, 

 Joseph A. Flint, and E. S. Babcock, and bears the number 10840 in the court record 

 of San Diego County. The plaintiffs were 17 in number, owning lands riparian to 

 the creek, beginning about 5 miles below the dam and extending for 4 miles farther, 

 to and beyond the town of Otay. The complaint alleges their riparian rights and 

 the great damage and injury accrued and to accrue from the obstruction of the flow 

 of the water, and asked judgment against the defendants that the dam be removed, 



