WATER STORAGE ON SWEETWATER AND SAN JACINTO RIVERS. 393 



and through State control, and the establishment of a central office of record, under 

 a State bureau, empowered to adjudicate all claims to water. This State board should 

 be a permanent commission, like the State board of health of ^Massachusetts, who 

 would appoint a State engineer, in whose office all claims should be tiled. There 

 should be in this office two sets of records, the first of which should be in the nature 

 of a preliminarj' or probationary filing. All claims of whatever character should be 

 received and recorded in the probationary record in the order of their receipt, all 

 claims upon any stream or its tributaries being ari-angeu systematically together. 

 Prior to transferring any claim into the second or permanent record it should be passed 

 upon by the board, who should require the claimant to prove conclusive!}', at his 

 own expense, (1) that there was water available for appropriation and that there 

 were no prior claims in conflict; (2) that there existed a requirement for the water 

 proposed to be appropriated, and (3) that the claimant had the ability, financiaUv 

 or otherwise, to proper!}- utilize the water. In case of a conflict, the board should 

 summon all prior claimants to prove their rights, and on hearing of testimony enter 

 a final decree upon the permanent record establishing these rights. The State 

 engineer should establish permanent gaging stations on all streams and maintain 

 such a system of measurements as will determine the minimum, maximum, and 

 average volume of water supply available for appropriation and use. The board 

 of control would have to be endowed with judicial powers, and their adjudication 

 of rights should be final, subject only to review by the supreme court of the State. 



The doctrine of riparian rights is wholly inapplicable to the torrential streams 

 of the State, whose waters should be subject to appropriation by impounding reser- 

 voirs unhampered by the assertion of this right. It has been shown in the two cases 

 cited that riparian owners stand ready to invoke the law to destroy any impounding 

 dam, no matter how costly or necessary to the welfare of the public, to satisfy a 

 fancied injury to water rights on streams that are dry a large portion of each year, 

 and of no practical utility to these riparian owners or anyone else without storage 

 reservoirs. The law of riparian rights should be modified to exclude interference 

 with impounding reservoirs of superior public utility to the greater niunber of the 

 people. 



The fullest conservation and use of water in torrential streams can be brought 

 about only by storage, and as a preliminary step all storage possibilities should be 

 intelligently studied on all the streams of the State by the State engineer, under 

 the direction of the State board of control. This involves an extended water survey 

 of the State and all the available reservoir sites within its limits. In this survey many 

 reservoir sites and storage enterprises will be discovered of such magnitude as to be 

 feasible of construction only by the National Government. These will, in most cases, 

 be located on Government land, and will store water for the irrigation of a portion 

 of the public domain only. Such enterprises should properly be undertaken by 

 the National Government, and the water supply thus conserved be turned over to the 

 State board of control for its proper distribution to the consumers. 



In pursuance of the foregoing conclusions, I respectfully submit the following 

 recommendations: 



(1) There should be created in California a special tribunal, entitled "The board 

 of control of waters," who shall have the determination of existing water rights 



