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Show ELEMENTS OF WATERCOURSE 59 accumulations may create watercourses where none previously existed, by raising the flows in the channels to the status of definite streams.186 In the process of this buildup, these "vagrant, fugitive" waste, seepage, return, and percolating waters lose their character as such and become part of the watercourse stream which they create or augment.187 Percolating Ground Water It has been said by eminent ground water hydrologists that practically all ground water "is moving toward some stream, perhaps at a considerable distance, the flow of which it is helping to maintain."188 The contributions made by ground water to the flow of surface streams, and the reverse process by which the surface stream discharges water into the ground, are well-known phenomena. The implications with respect to water rights in these physically interconnected sources of supply are discussed later, in chapter 19. The supreme courts of both Colorado and Utah have made sweeping comments on watershed relationships between streamflow and sources of supply, including intermediate percolating water.189 Percolating water loses its character as such when it reaches a natural surface channel and mingles with the water flowing there. It then constitutes a part of the watercourse.190 Underflow The underflow of a surface stream is the subsurface portion of a watercourse the whole of which comprises waters flowing in close association both on and beneath the surface. 186Binning v. Miller, 55 Wyo. 451, 462, 475-476, 102 Pac. (2d) 54 (1940). See Hansen v. Crouch, 98 Oreg. 141, 146, 193 Pac. 454 (1920). See also Hutchins, Wells, A., U.S. Dept. Agr., Tech. Bui. 439, "Policies Governing the Ownership of Return Waters from Irrigation" (1934). 187Popham v. Holloron, 84 Mont. 442, 452-453, 275 Pac. 1099 (1929);Rock Creek Ditch & Flume Co. v.Miller, 93 Mont. 248, 260, 17 Pac. (2d) 1074 (1933). See//* re German Ditch & Res. Co., 56 Colo. 252, 267-271, 139 Pac. 2 (1913). The fact that tributary waters flowed through sloughs in flat, boggy areas would not necessarily change the character of the watercourse of which they become a part: Bachman v. Reynolds Irr. Dist., 56 Idaho 507, 512, 55 Pac. (2d) 1314 (1936). 188 Thompson, David G., and Fiedler, Albert G., "Some Problems Relating to Legal Control of Use of Ground Waters," 30 Jour. Amer. Water Works Assn., 1049-1091 at p. 1060 (July, 1938). 189 Streamflow is made up of rains and snowfall on the surface, springs, and water percolating under the surface, which finds its way to the streams running through the watersheds in which it occurs: In re German Ditch & Res. Co., 56 Colo. 252, 271, 139 Pac. 2 (1913). Rains and snows falling on the vast watershed area sink into the soil and find their way through the sloping strata to the center channel; the entire sheet of water, or water table, constitutes the river: Richlands Irr. Co. v. Westview Irr. Co., 96 Utah 403, 418, 80 Pac. (2d) 458 (1938). 190Rock Creek Ditch & Flume Co. v. Miller, 93 Mont. 248, 260, 17 Pac. (2d) 1074 (1933). |
