IRRIGATION REQUIREMENTS OF THE GREAT BASIN 35 
influencing an economical use of water. Likewise, the State engi- 
neer usually has the discretion of refusing applications that may 
interfere with a more beneficial use or that may otherwise prove 
detrimental to the public welfare. 
COURT DECISIONS 
Litigation over water rights involving determinations of the duty 
of water began among the Mormon pioneers and has been widespread 
in all the States of the Great Basin, as well as in other parts of the 
West. In line with the generally wasteful irrigation practices of 
the early days, when water was plentiful and could be secured at 
small cost, the court decisions allotting water were most generous to 
the litigants at the expense of nonparticipating water users and the 
public alike. Streams were over-appropriated, and decrees were 
rendered in many cases for far more water than the stream carried. 
Quite generally the economical use of water was not considered in 
establishing the rights of users. As late as 1893 a decision was ren- 
dered by the Supreme Court of Oregon 12 that "the quantity of 
water to be appropriated is to be measured by the capacity of the 
ditch at its smallest part ; that is, at the point where the least water 
can be carried through it." 
But with the increase in the settlement of land and the resulting 
decrease in available supplies of water, more careful use has become 
necessary and wasteful methods are frowned upon by the public and 
the courts. In the famous Oregon case of Hough v. Porter, 13 decided 
in 1909, the court called attention to the more economical use of 
water made necessary by the scarcity of the supply and stated : 
In this arid country such manner of use must necessarily be adopted as 
will insure the greatest duty possible for the quantity available. The waste- 
ful methods so common with early settlers can, under the light most favorable 
to their system of use, be deemed only a privilege permitted merely because it 
could be exercised without substantial injury to anyone ; and no right to such 
methods of use was acquired thereby. 
Throughout the more recent decisions of the higher courts runs 
an insistence that water be used economically, and a determination 
that the courts will require " the highest and greatest possible duty 
from the waters of the State in the interest of agriculture and other 
useful and beneficial purposes." Xi 
In actually determining the duty in individual cases the courts 
have frequently been hampered by a lack of available information 
upon water requirements. Opinion evidence has been plentiful, and 
has often been the only evidence upon which decisions were rendered. 
The courts more recently have come to refer, in arriving at the duty 
of water, to the best use in a community, to lands well prepared for 
irrigation, and to actual tests and experiments as to the proper duty 
rather than to rely upon guesswork on the part of persons not com- 
petent to testify upon the subject. 
Another angle from which the courts have attacked the uneco- 
nomical use of water has been in passing upon the method of distri- 
bution. In Oregon, Idaho, and California decisions have been 
12 Coventon r. Scufert, .T2 Pac. 503. 
13 98 Pac. 1083. 
14 Farmers' Cooperative Ditch Co. r. Riverside Irrigation. District, Ltd., et al. (Idaho), 
102. Pac. 4S1. 
