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Show THE RIPARIAN RIGHT 119 Mining The earliest decisions of the California Supreme Court with regard to riparian water rights were rendered as a result of controversies in the mining areas on the public domain. Occupants of mining claims contiguous to streams on the public lands of the United States were regarded as having rights equivalent to those of riparian landowners as against persons who undertook to appropriate water from the streams to which the mining claims were contiguous.615 These were not complete riparian rights, because the actual owner of the land, the United States, was not in court, and a miner's possessory right ceased when he abandoned the claim. Thus, the inchoate riparian right could be asserted by prior occupants of public lands for mining purposes, as well as for agriculture, as against subsequent appropriators, just as the matured riparian right could be asserted by patentees of such lands. Mining is classed as an extraordinary or artificial use of water, as is irrigation.616 An Alaska statute enacted in 1917 accorded to the locator of any mining claim that includes both banks of a stream, in the absence of a prior appropriation and as against all subsequent locators, the use of all of the stream waters necessary for his use in mining the claim.617 A United States Court of Appeals repudiated the riparian doctrine in Alaska in 1910, but declared 30 years later that the 1917 statute enacted the law of riparian rights to a limited extent.618 However, in 1966 the Alaska Legislature repealed this mining legilsation in enacting the Water Use Act,619 which apparently purports to phase out riparian rights to divert, impound, and withdraw water.620 Industrial Manufacturing is a recognized artificial use of riparian water.621 Some other 61sCrandall v. Woods, 8 Cal. 136, 140-144 (1857); Hill v. Newman, 5 Cal. 445, 446 (1855); Kelly v. Natoma Water Co., 6 Cal. 105, 108 (1856); Conger v. Weaver, 6 Cal. 548, 558 (1856); Leigh Co. v. Independent Ditch Co., 8 Cal. 323 (1857); Lux v. Haggin, 69 Cal. 255, 357,4 Pac. 919 (1884), 10 Pac. 674 (1886). 6iiLone Tree Ditch Co. v. Cyclone Ditch Co., 26 S. Dak. 307, 311-313, 128 N.W. 596 (1910). 617Alaska Laws 1917, ch. 57, Comp. Laws Ann. § 47-3-35 (1949), Stat. §§ 27.10.080 (Supp. 1962) and 38.05.260 (Supp. 1965). 618 Van Dyke v. Midnight Sun Min. Co., 177 Fed. 85, 88, 91 (9th Cir. 1910); Balabanoffv. Kellogg, 10 Alaska 11, 16-17, 118 Fed. (2d) 597, 599 (9th Cir. 1940), certiorari denied, 314 U.S. 635 (1941). 619 Alaska Laws 1966, ch. 50, § 2. 620Id. § 1, Stat. § 46.15.060 et seq. (Supp. 1966). For a further discussion of this legislation see, in chapter 6, "Interrelationships of the Dual Water Rights Systems-The Status in Summary: By States-Alaska." 621Benton v. Johncox, 17 Wash. 277, 289-290, 49 Pac. 495 (1897); Lone Tree Ditch Co. v. Cyclone Ditch Co., 26 S. Dak. 307, 311-313, 128 N.W. 596 (1910). |