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Show 719 take only such amount as he reasonably needs for beneficial purposes. * * * Any water not needed for the reasonable beneficial uses of those having prior rights is excess or surplus water. In California surplus water may rightfully be appropriated on privately owned land for non- overlying uses, such as devotion to a public use or exportation beyond the basin or watershed. * * * Proper overlying use, however, is paramount, and the right of an appropriator, being limited to the amount of the surplus, must yield to that of the overlying owner in the event of a shortage, unless the appropriator has gained prescriptive rights through the taking of nonsurplus waters. As between overlying owners, the rights, like those of riparians, are correlative and are re- ferred to as belonging to all in common; each may use only his reason- able share when water is insufficient to meet the needs of all." The actual decision in Pasadena v. Alhambra, supra** is of funda- mental importance in California ground-water law because of the principles therein applied to the adjustment of rights to the use of waters of a ground-water area (Raymond Basin) that had been over- drawn for many years. Claimants of most of the water rights, including "overlying" landowners and appropriators for distant use or for public service, were parties to the adjudication. The supreme court stated that there was an invasion to some extent of the rights of both overlying landowners and appropriators commencing in 1913-14, when the over- draft first occurred. From then until the suit was brought in 1937, the pumpage from the basin exceeded the safe yield in all excepting two years; but notwithstanding the overdraft, the parties continued their pumping, the effect of which was to continue the overdraft and lowering of the water table. Hence no user was immediately prevented from taking the water he needed; the injury "consisted of the continual lower- ing of the level and gradual reducing of the total amount of stored water, the accumulated effect of which, after a period of years, would be to render the supply insufficient to meet the needs of the rightful owners." The invasion thus was a partial one; but the pumping by each party necessarily interfered with the future possibility of pumping by each of the other parties. The court held that prescriptive rights were established by appropriations made after the commencement of the overdraft; that such rights were acquired against both overlying owners and prior appropriators; that the overlying owners and prior appropriators also obtained or preserved rights by reason of the water which they pumped; and that the production of water should be limited by a proportionate reduction in the amount each party had taken throughout the statutory period. The effect of the decision is that where overlying landowners and appropriators had been pumping from a ground-water basin for many years after the safe yield had been over- 4S See supra, n. 42, p. 718. &11611-51------47 |