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Show 312 APPROPRIATION OF WATER (3) Intermediate. Department of Conservation and Development, Supervisor of Water Resources: (d) all functions. (4) Intermediate. Department of Conservation, Supervisor of Water Re- sources: (d) all functions. (5) Intermediate. Department of Water Resources, Director of Water Resources: (d) all functions. (6) Current. Department of Ecology, Director of Ecology: (d) all functions. Wyoming.- (1) Original and current. State Engineer, Board of Control: (a) appropriation. Board of Control (State Engineer and superintendents): (b) adjudication; (c) distribution. Current Appropriation Procedures Administrative States and agencies vested with supervision over appropriation of water.- To recapitulate: (1) States. All Western States except Colorado, Hawaii, and Montana provide statutory procedure for the acquisition of appropriative water rights under the supervision of a central State administrative agency. (2) State Engineer. In New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, the State Engineer is the supervising official, acting independently. In Nevada, the State Engineer heads a division in a State department. In North Dakota, with approval of the commission of which he is secretary and chief engineer, the State Engineer may accept and process applications to appropriate water. In Oregon, the State Engineer must refer applications for permits that may involve the public welfare to a water resources board for consideration and action. (3) In the remaining 10 Western States that have public supervision, the supervising State agency is a department, board, or commission. The concept of several statutes is that the agency vested with this function acts through a specified official thereof. Purposes of the legislation. -Some of the influences and pressures that led one Western State after another to abandon its posting and filing method of appropriating water-or its lack of any statutory method-and to move over into the field of administrative control are discussed above under "Statutory- Inadequacies of the Preadministration Procedures." Broadly, so far as acquisition of rights was concerned, the chief purpose was to provide an orderly method for the appropriation of unappropriated waters.438 This new method consisted of (a) making applications to an informed and experienced State agency for specific quantities of water which bore some relation to the purposes and needs of the appropriator; (b) denying 438 Temescal Water Co. v. Department of Public Works, 44 Cal. (2d) 90, 95, 280 Pac. (2d) 1 (1955). |