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Show INTERRELATIONSHIPS OF THE DUAL WATER RIGHTS SYSTEMS 217 protection of priorities based on beneficial use theretofore made under various combinations of circumstances. In a recent case, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that this 1963 legislation did not apply to situations in which it concluded that the rights of the litigants had vested under the laws in existence prior to this amendment, although it was held to have retroactively eliminated certain procedural • • • • • OHO n-vi i • requirements in previous appropriation statutes. The courts opinion includes some discussion of the question of the correlation of riparian and appropriative rights under the pre-1963 Oklahoma laws.273 Law, Stream and Surface Under the 1963 Amendments" 23 Okla. Law Rev. 19, 42, 44 (1970). Certain existing riparian rights conceivably might be affected and protected by the following provisions of the 1963 legislation: (1) Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 82, § l-A(b) (1970) pertains to beneficial uses initiated before statehood. (2) Section 1-A(b)2 specifies that priorities established in adjudications under prior legislation will be accorded priority as assigned in the adjudication decrees if they have not been lost in whole or in part because of nonuse as provided in § 32 of tit. 82. See Rarick, supra at 42; Rarick, J. F., "Oklahoma Water Law, Stream and Surface in the Pre-1963 Period," 22 Okla. Law Rev. 1,38(1969). 272 Oklahoma Water Resources Bd. v. Central Oklahoma Master Conservancy Dist., 464 Pac. (2d) 748 (Okla. 1968). The Court in its 1968 opinion held that the 1963 legislation had no application to the case because "This act was passed both after the initiation of the appropriation by the District and after the commencement of the Draper Dam project [by Oklahoma City, the coplaintiff on appeal]. The rights of the District and of the City vested under the law in existence before the cited amendment was enacted." Id. at 755. Nevertheless, in its 1969 supplemental opinion on rehearing, the court held the 1963 legislation had eliminated "pre-1963 statutory conditions precedent for the perfection of a water right, i.e., hydrographic survey and adjudication proceedings.. ." with which the District had not complied. Id. at 756. The court held these to be procedural requirements and that "no one has a vested right in any particular mode of procedure for the enforcement or defense of his rights. Hence, the general rule that statutes will be construed to be prospective only does not apply to statutes affecting procedure; but such statutes, unless the contrary intention is clearly expressed or implied, apply to all actions falling within their terms, whether the right of action existed before or accrued after the enactment. .. ." Id. This case is critically reviewed in Rarick, supra note 271, 23 Okla. Law Rev. at 52-70. 273 This case involved the relative rights of Oklahoma City which had constructed a dam in a nonnavigable stream and the conservancy district which had acquired a prior appropriative right at a downstream location. The court said: "Since pre-statehood days the system of prior appropriation has coexisted in Oklahoma with that of recognized riparian and proprietary rights in water. Gates v. Settlers' Milling, Canal & Reservoir Co., 19 Okl. 83, 91 P. 856 (1907). This court has not been called upon before to correlate these two separate doctrines of property which are to a substantial degree incompatible." 464 Pac. (2d) 748, 752 (1968). The court further said: "In Jan. 1961, when the City was granted a license to construct Stanley Draper Dam and to interrupt the flow of East Elm Creek, its rights to the creek were governed by 60 O. S. 1951, § 60, the statute then in force. Under the terms of that statute the City had no right to store surface water in the bed of a definite stream and continue to claim them as its property. Nor could it obstruct the course of a definite stream [citing previous Oklahoma cases]. Its rights in that stream, which were not proprietary but merely riparian, could not be increased by the |