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Show 148 PROPERTY NATURE OF WATER AND WATER RIGHTS and that the owner of the dam had no right of recreation or fishery distinct from the right of the general public thereto.47 In determining questions of abandonment and appropriation of waste water, the Supreme Court of Oregon held that water appropriated and diverted from a natural stream and taken into possession and confinement in ditches or other artificial works becomes personal property.48 On the theory that such water is personal property, it belongs to the appropriator from the natural stream and it cannot be appropriated from the artificial works. Only specific quantities of the water may be abandoned. The South Dakota Supreme Court had occasion to construe a statutory grant of power to a municipality "to acquire a suitable supply of water" for the use of the city.49 In disagreeing with the contention that under the contract the city did not "acquire" any supply of water, the court held that water when impounded and reduced to possession is personal property; that when separated from its source it may be bought and sold like other commodities. The very apparent legislative intent, said the court, was to grant to municipal corporations the power to obtain water. For purposes of taxation, the Utah Supreme Court differentiated between (1) water flowing in a natural stream or in a ditch and (2) water in the pipes of a distributing system.50 The former, said the court, is not subject to ownership so far as the corpus of the water is concerned, the right to use it being a hereditament appurtenant to land and exempt from taxation when the land itself is subject to taxation. On the other hand, water in the pipes of a distributing system is personal property, the ownership being in the water itself. At common law such water was the subject of larceny. Not being appurtenant to any land, it was not within the Utah statutory exemption from taxation. In another case-an action for damages for injury to fish and fishponds in which the owners of the fishponds were not the owners of the real estate on which they were located-the Supreme Court of Utah held that the action was one for injury to "personal property pure and simple."51 Still another Utah action involved the right of a shareholder of a mutual irrigation corporation to have water to which she was entitled delivered into her own private pipeline, to be taken and used for culinary purposes outside the territory irrigated by the company's own canal system.52 In sustaining the right 47State ex rel. State Game Commission v. Red River Valley Co., 51 N. Mex. 207, 223-229, 182 Pac. (2d) 421 (1945). ^Vaughn v. Kolb, 130 Oreg. 506, 511-512, 280 Pac. 518 (1929). See also Barker v. Sonner, 135 Oreg. 75, 85, 294 Pac. 1053 (1931). "Robbinsv. Rapid City, 71 S. Dak. 171, 177-179, 23 N. W. (2d) 144(1946). S0Bear Lake & River Waterworks & Irr. Co. v. Ogden, 8 Utah 494, 496, 33 Pac. 135 (1893). See also Utah Metal & Tunnel Co. v. Groesbeck, 62 Utah 251, 256, 219 Pac. 248 (1923). S1 Reese v. Qualtrough, 48 Utah 23, 30, 156 Pac. 955 (1916). S2Baird v. Upper Canal Irr. Co., 70 Utah 57, 69, 257 Pac. 1060 (1927). Plaintiff installed her private pipeline at her own expense with the acquiescence of the company manage- |