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Show 260 however, we shall treat later and separately the acceptance in legislation of the recognized necessity for comprehensive river-basin development, the conjunctive sequel to the multiple-purpose concept.1 The interference with navigation by early mill dams and later hydroelectric developments evoked a large body of law concerning riparian rights principally in the East. Similarly, man's dependence upon water for drinking, mining, and irri- gation in the arid and semiarid parts of the West induced other complicated and varied legal rules affecting the use of waters. The ensuing collisions between private and public interests, local conflicts among water users, relationships between local and national interests, and the overriding disregard of state boundaries by interstate streams-all served to broaden the multiplicity of considerations affecting use of water. With this came a parallel enlargement of legislative and judicial concepts of water control in which power development has played an important role. Congress has legislated with an increasing awareness of the national aspects of develop- ment, use, and conservation of water resources. In so doing, however, it has sought to accommodate local interests and to encourage the cooperation of the states and local agencies, apparently recognizing that the nature and sheer magnitude of the task solicit coordination of actions and integrated as- sumption of responsibilities. And although regularly recog- nizing the supremacy of federal power where it exists, the courts have generally found nothing objectionable in such coordinate arrangements. The principal conflicts between claims to rights acquired under state law and assertions of federal power have concerned the navigability of streams; the use and control of water in streams; and the use and control of lands lying beneath or riparian to both navigable and nonnavigable streams. As already noted, the Supreme Court early held that, following the Revolution, the people themselves became sovereign and held absolute right to all their navigable waters and the soils under them for their common use, subject to rights since sur- 1 See infra, pp. 384-491. |