384 IRRIGATION INVESTIGATIONS IN CALIFORNIA. 



COST OF WATEB lilTIGATION. 



The cost of litigation in the various disputes over water between the San Diego 

 Land and Town Company and the irrigators has been estimated as in excess of 

 $20,000, and there is still much uncertainty regarding respective rights. 



The effect of this litigation on irrigation development and the values of land has 

 been very disastrous. 



RIGHTS FOR STORAGE AND UNDERGROUND WATERS. 



On this subject but little can be said as applicable to the Sweetwater system 

 which is not general to the whole State. The only recognized rights to storage and 

 underground waters are those which are granted to all persons under the water 

 appropriation law of the State, and can not be distinguished from the rights granted 

 by the same act to the surface flow of the streams. The use of underground water 

 on this watershed is too small in volume to affect the discharge of the stream 

 appreciably or at all. 



NATURE OF AN APPROPRIATION OF WATER. 



I think it is universally held throughout California that the ditch or reservoir 

 builder is the appropriator of the water, and not the land itself. On this system no 

 assertions of being actual appropriators of the water have been made by the land- 

 owners in all the litigation that has arisen, nor any allegations that the San Diego 

 Land and Town Company is merely a common carrier for the people, as has been 

 maintained in Colorado. There is some difference of opinion, however, as to whether 

 or not the company owns the corpus of the water impounded in its reservoir, as 

 distinguished from the "right of use" of the water of a flowing stream. It would 

 seem to the writer as though they had seized, captured, and impounded the water, 

 and owned it as absolutely as though they had put it into bottles, or in any other 

 form by which it might be shipped away. They sell it by volume and measure it 

 out in regular units of measurement, so man v thousands of gallons being apportioned 

 to each acre, and no one has any more right to intrude upon the reservoir site to take 

 any of the water stored therein, even though the reservoir may be a part of the 

 stream, than they would have to enter a warehouse and take the merchandise stored 

 there. To the extent of the capacity of the reservoir the company is absolute owner 

 of all water which flows in the stream down to the margin of the reservoir. 



There should be a modification in the appropriation laws when applied to reser- 

 voirs in the way of defining the appropriation made for them, and instead of express- 

 ing such appropriation in minei*'s inches under a 4-inch pressure, as at present, the 

 amount appropriated should bear some fixed relation to the capacitj' of the reservoir, 

 and should either be a stated number of acre-feet per annum, or it should be 

 expressed in reservoirfuls. Also, the capacity of the reservoir in acre-feet, or some 

 other convenient unit, should be known and stated in the notice of appropriation. 



RETURN SEEPAGE AND ITS EFFECT ON WATER RIGHTS. 



The return water, or seepage, from irrigation along the Sweetwater Valley is 

 manifest in but one case very conspicuously. W-hen a certain alfalfa field of 40 

 acres in area at Bonnie Brae is irrigated sufficiently to maintain the crop in vigor- 



