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Show 296 APPROPRIATION OF WATER The special agents who made the California study under the direction of Dr. Mead met at Berkeley on completion of the work and held a conference regarding the more important measures necessary to fully develop California's agricultural possibilities. There was "a practical unanimity of opinion among them" as to what should be done. In place of the then existing posting and filing method and complete absence of public supervision over the public waters, these men held it to be the duty of the State to take certain prescribed measures for supervising and controlling water appropriations under "an efficient administrative system."377 A decade later, while proposed legislation for water rights administration under a water commission was being considered at a public meeting in San Francisco, this author heard the proposal both warmly supported and bitterly assailed. One objection was that there was "no crying need" for it. Dr. Mead's group of engineers and technicians did not use the phrase "crying need" in their written reports. But one cannot read their accounts and recommenda- tions, and sometimes sarcastic comments, without concluding that that was the way they felt about it. It is remarkable that senseless claims of appropriated water, such as those stated in the foregoing examples, should be found in county records in so many parts of California. From this authentic study alone, the conclusion is inescapable that a recorded claim of quantity of water, without verification of quantitites actually diverted and used, could have had little or no evidential value. The Utah experience. -The Utah experience with the posting and filing method came so late in the 19th century and lasted for such a short time as to be negligible. However, pro rata divisions of streamflow expressed either by fractional parts or by percentages of the flow were commonly made in Utah under an earlier law.378 Many examples of controlling agreements and decrees are disclosed in a report published in 1903 of a study of irrigation in Utah, comparable to the problems in California, particularly as he found them in San Joaquin Valley, he had drawn among other conclusions the following: "The present method of posting notices and recording appropriations of water, under the existing State law previously referred to, is unsatisfactory to the last degree; in practice it results in great indefiniteness as to the amount of water claimed and uncertainty as to the locality mentioned. It countenances ignorance of water laws and water engineering, leads to obscurity of title, and, in many instances, renders the establishment of the validity and priority of claims almost impossible." Id. at 255. 377Id. at 397-400. 378 Thomas, George, "The Development of Institutions under Irrigation," pp. 143-144 (1920). Utah Laws 1880, ch. 20, § 8, provided that a right to the use of water might be measured by fractional parts of the whole supply, or by fractional parts with a limitation as to periods of time and use. |
