WATER STORAGE ON SWEETWATER AND SAN JACINTO RIVERS. 379 



LITIGATION OVER WATER RIGHTS, ITS CAUSES, COST, AND INTLTJENCE ON 

 IRRIGATION DEVELOPMENT, AND THE PRINCIPLES ESTABLISHED BY THE 

 DECISIONS RENDERED. 



There has been no litigation, as far as I have been able to ascertain, between 

 rival appropriators of the Sweetwater River waters. As heretofore explained, the 

 San Diego Land and Town Company is the owner of the onlj" stoi^age reservoir on 

 the stream, and there has never been any contest or question of the right of the 

 corporation to receive and impound all the natural run off of the stream, and none 

 of the local diversions that have been or are likely to be made for irrigating lands 

 riparian to the stream above the reservoir can possibly affect in any appreciable way 

 the supply of the Sweetwater Dam, and consequently the corporation controlling 

 that supply has no motive for questioning or attempting to interfere with such 

 diversions, abstractions, or appi'opriations. Any lands irrigated in the watershed 

 above the Sweetwater Dam must contribute a portion, at least, of the water so applied 

 to the underflow of the river, and so, in a measure, return to the reservoir below. 

 The Sweetwater Fruit Company, whose developments below the dam on their lands 

 riparian to the stream bed have already been mentioned, has been uneasy- for some 

 time lest the neighboring well and pump developments of the San Diego Land and 

 Town Company should diminish their supply, and have thraatened suit, although 

 probably deterred by the decision in the Doyle riparian case before mentioned. 



THE NATIONAIi CITY WATER-BATE CASE. 



There has been an abundance of costly litigation, however, over the secondary 

 water rights under the San Diego Land and Town Companj-'s system, which began 

 in an action brought by the San Diego Land and Town Company against -the city of 

 National City to set aside an ordinance of the board of trustees, passed February 21, 

 1895, fixing water i-ates for all uses. The complaint of the company was that the 

 irrigation rate of $4 per acre per annum, lixed by the city ordinance, was so low as 

 to tend to deprive the corporation of its property Avithout due process of law; also, 

 that the ordinance made no provision permitting the corporation to exact payment 

 for a water right, of $100 per acre, claimed by it in cases where new consumers for 

 irrigation desired to be connected with its sj'stem. 



This cause was decided against the corporation by Judge Ross, of the circuit 

 court for the southern district of California, the decision being found in Tit Federal 

 Reporter, page 79. The decree of the court created no small amount of consterna- 

 tion in California, because it held that water companies, organized to distribute and 

 sell water under the laws of the State from the public streams, had no such property 

 as a " water right " which could be sold, and which they could require consumers to 

 buy as a condition prior to the company's consenting to suppl}' them with water. 

 The following language is extracted from the decision referring to this point: 



One of the objects of the present suit is to obtain a decree establishing the validity of that claim 

 of the complainant to exact a sum of money, in addition to an annual charge, as a condition on which 

 alone the complainant will furnish consumers with water for irrigation purposes, other than those to 

 whom it had furnished it for such purposes, prior to December 18, 1892, and the contest that arose 

 between the consumers and the company over this charge for a so-called "water right," and the 

 refusal ot the municipal authorities of National City to allow that charge in respect to acreage property 



