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Show ELEMENTS OF THE APPROPRIATIVE RIGHTS 525 public purpose.429 Texas declares that the conservation and development of natural resources including water for irrigation, power, and other useful purposes are public rights and duties.430 Use of water in Washington for irrigation, mining, and manufacturing purposes is a public use.431 The Oregon constitution declares that the right to all water for development of water power and to water power sites owned by the State shall be held in perpetuity, and it clothes the State with broad powers to control and develop water and to distribute electric energy.432 Early Uses of Water in the West (1) The Indians of the Southwest carried on agricultural operations with the aid of irrigation for centuries before the Spanish explorers came. The Spaniards brought to this continent a knowledge of irrigation institutions and practice acquired chiefly from the Moors and proceeded to adapt their irrigation experience to the new country. As a result, Indian customs were modified but not extinguished, and out of the merging of the Spanish and Indian methods of public or community handling of irrigation affairs there developed the Spanish-American community acequia. Thus, the community acequia provided the southwestern settlements with water both for domestic purposes and for irrigation.433 (2) The same result was achieved by use of ditches built by the Mormons in Utah and surrounding regions from the time in July 1847 when the first pioneer company, led by Brigham Young, entered Great Salt Lake Valley and established there the nucleus of a great colonization enterprise.434 In addition to domestic and irrigation purposes, water of Utah settlements was put to use in providing power for operating milling machinery.435 An act passed at the first session of the Territorial Legislative Assembly gave the county courts control of all water privileges and authority "to grant mill sites."436 429 S. Dak. Const., art. XXI, § 7. 430 Tex. Const., art. XVI, § 59(a). 431 Wash. Const., art. XXI, § 1. 432 Oreg. Const., art. XI-D. 433Hutchins, Wells A., "The Community Acequia: Its Origin and Development," 31 Southwestern Historical Quarterly 261 (1928). The first Spanish settlement in what is now the Southwestern United States was at San Juan, New Mexico, near the junction of the Rio Chama and the Rio Grande. There Juan de Oflate established his colony in 1598. "On August 11 of that year work was begun on an irrigation ditch, the Spaniards being assisted in their labor by some 1500 Indians." Id. at 275, citing Bancroft, H. H., "Arizona and New Mexico," p. 132 (1889). 434Hutchins, Wells A., "Mutual Irrigation Companies in Utah," Utah Agricultural Experiment Station Bull. 199 pp. 9-16 (1927). 435 Thomas, George, "The Development of Institutions under Irrigation," pp. 46-48 (1920). 436Terr. Utah Laws 1852, p. 38 § 39, "An Act in Relation to the Judiciary," approved February 4, 1852. |
