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Show METHODS OF APPROPRIATING WATER OF WATERCOURSES 407 supply may be found above the requirements of holders of existing rights. Hence, the question of better public policy-to deny the application, with the possibility that the conclusions of the administrative officer may be in error and a proposed beneficial use of water be thereby foreclosed, or to grant the application and allow the intending appropriator to take the risk of failure of his project if no water supply proves to be available. In 1922, in the interstate case of Wyoming v. Colorado, the United States Supreme Court referred to an assertion by counsel that permits issued by the Wyoming State Engineer constituted "solemn adjudications" by that official that the supply was adequate to cover them. The Court stated:892 But in this the nature of the permits is misapprehended. In fact and in law they are not adjudications, but mere licenses to appropriate, if the requisite amount of water be there. As to many nothing ever is done under them by the intending appropriators. In such cases there is no appropriation, and even in others the amount of the appropriation turns on what is actually done under the permit. In late years the permits relating to these streams have contained a provision, saying: "The records of the state engineer's office show the waters of [the particular stream] to be largely appropriated. The appropriator under the permit is hereby notified of this fact, and the issuance of this permit grants only the right to divert and use the surplus or waste water of the stream and confers no rights which will interfere with or impair the use of water by prior appropriators." It therefore is plain that these permits have no such probative force as Colorado seeks to have attributed to them. From the statutes and decisions, there is no doubt that the determination of the State water control agency in any appropriation-permit State in the West: (a) is an administrative function; (b) is not an adjudication of outstanding private rights; and (c) is to be made from a consideration of all pertinent factors solely for the guidance of the administrative agency in passing upon the intending appropriator's application for a permit. All this is true in the course of administrative processing of the application. It is equally valid during and after review of the administrative decision in a court of competent jurisdiction, where the procedure for obtaining the requested permit merges into and ends in a judicial adjudication. Nonimpairment of existing water rights.-{\) Nearly all the water appropri- ation statutes of the West that provide administrative control over acquisition of water rights contain language forbidding the issuance of permits the effect of which will be to impair the value of existing water rights. In jurisdictions in which riparian rights are recognized, this applies to impairment of riparian as well as appropriative water rights. The Texas statute directs that this protection 892 Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419, 488-489 (1922). See Ide v. United States, 263 U.S. 497, 507-508(1924). |