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Show 90 CHARACTERISTICS OF WATERCOURSE their water rights.353 On the other hand, decisions with respect to streams flowing from the Sierra Nevada into San Joaquin Valley were uniformly to the effect that the high waters thereof were flows that were expected annually and hence were not unusual, extraordinary, or unexpected, and that they constituted waters to which riparian rights attached.354 In construing the constitutional amendment of 1928, which limited riparian rights to reasonable beneficial use under reasonable methods of diversion and use, the California Supreme Court stated that "distinctions heretofore made between the unusual or extraordinary and the usual or ordinary flood and freshet waters of a stream are no longer applicable."355 Change of Channel Effect on Property Boundaries Gradual change of channel.- Stream channels may shift slowly and imperceptibly from one location to another over considerable distances. This may result from the gradual addition of alluvium to one bank along the waterline, called accretion, or the gradual withdrawal of the water from the land on that side, called reliction, and from the gradual erosion of land from the opposite bank.356 Where such change comes about gradually, a boundary line consisting of the thread of a stream will ordinarily shift with the accretion and decrement caused by the water.357 Thus, the one riparian owner, by accretion or reliction, acquires land not previously owned by him, and the other whose land is carried away by erosion loses title to the eroded area.3S8 Furthermore, it has been held that the lost title to an eroded area is not regained if the submerged land reappears as the result of another recession of the river; the new land becomes 353 Edgar v. Stevenson, 70 Cal. 286, 289-291, 11 Pac. 704 (1886); Modoc Land & Live Stock Co., v. Booth, 102 Cal. 151, 156-158, 36 Pac. 431 (1894); Fifield v. Spring Valley Water Works, 130 Cal. 552, 553-555, 62 Pac. 1054 (1900); Gallatin v. Corning In. Co., 163 Cal. 405, 413, 126 Pac. 864 (1912); Gin S. Chow v. Santa Barbara, 111 Cal. 673, 683, 686, 22 Pac. (2d) 5 (1933). 354Miller & Lux v. Madera Canal & Irr. Co., 155 Cal. 59, 76, 99 Pac. 502 (1907); Herminghaus v. Southern California Edison Co., 200 Cal. 81, 88, 103, 252 Pac. 607 (1926); Collier v. Merced Irr. Dist., 213 Cal. 554, 558, 2 Pac. (2d) 790 (1931); Chowchilla Farms v. Martin, 219 Cal. 1, 26-33, 39, 25 Pac. (2d) 435 (1933). 35SPeabody v. Vallejo, 2 Cal. (2d) 351, 368, 40 Pac. (2d) 486 (1935). 3S6Wiel, S. C, "Water Rights in the Western States," 3rd ed., vol. 1, § 901 (1911). Kinney, C. S., "A Treatise on the Law of Irrigation and Water Rights," 2d ed., vol. 1, § 927 (1912). 357 Campbell v. Weisbrod, 73 Idaho 82, 88, 245 Pac. (2d) 1052 (1952); State v.Ecklund, 147 Nebr. 508, 521, 23 N. W. (2d) 782 (1946). The boundary of land bordering the stream changes with the changing course of the stream: Hirt v. Entus, 37 Wash. (2d) 418, 423, 224 Pac. (2d) 620 (1950). 3S*Manry v. Robison, 122 Tex. 213, 225, 56 S. W. (2d) 438 (1932). See Hogue v. Bourgois, 71 N. W. (2d) 47 (N. Dak. 1955). |
