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Show 26 The Role of Cities Among the quickest to respond to the implications of science for water administration were city engineers and others connected with urban government. This came, however, after the mid- 18708 as both urban needs and developing technology galvanized city fathers into action. The territorial legislature had earlier acted on its preference for local administration of water when it turned responsibility and authority over to city councils to supply and control water matters. Representing a shift of control from the ward bishops, this role began with the incorporation of Salt Lake City in 1851 and continued as charters incorporating cities were granted until about 1875. Although all incorporated cities appeared to have received this authority, only Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo, Logan, American Fork, and a few others asserted their authority in dealings with the cooperative local water companies and the county courts. 9 The charters authorized cities to govern not only the water within city limits but the fields appurtenant to the city. Under this arrangement the city council's role was similar to that of the county courts in many respects. Charged to " subserve the public interest for irrigation, domestic or other purposes" councils considered petitions for water, examined development sites, heard remonstrances, granted rights, and as power sources and culinary needs mounted, examined priority of use patterns and issued what amounted to decrees. They were also jealous of their prerogatives sometimes resisting the creation of irrigation districts overlapping city systems, and at other times making irrigation districts answer to the city. 10 Cities were frequently generous in their administration. They often levied taxes on all property, thus providing something of a subsidy for irrigators and other water users. In a capital- short society the pioneer system had made labor on a new settlement's developing irrigation network the currency necessary to acquire land and water rights. From this common experience of small community based irrigation works, it was not a long step for the more developed cities to undertake to sponsor public irrigation and water systems. Ogden and one or two other cities took the lead in building canal systems and exacting general taxes to finance them. 11 Cities also appointed water masters who in turn appointed assistant masters either according to ward boundaries or particular ditch systems. Users petitioned for water each year and were given a turn according to a prevailing rotation system. Water rights were distributed " as shall best serve the public interest" and were allotted: 12 " among the applicants entitled to a portion of said water with respect to time and quantity of water, according to the extent of land specified in the respective applications." Most of what follows depends upon George Thomas, The Development of Institutions Under Irrigation: With Special Reference to Early Utah Conditions ( New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), Chapter VL George Thomas, Institutions Under Irrigation, pp 92- 116. A description of construction and financing of early Ogden canals ( as well as others cities' canals) is given by Thomas, Ibid., p 68- 70. I2Ibid., pp 110- 111. |
