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Show 780 INTERSTATE ADJUDICATIONS though recognized in Washington, is contested by Oregon. The project affected by that award was started in 1892 by the Walla Walla Irri- gation Company. A canal to connect with the Walla Walla Eiver was to carry water for irrigation to a tract known as the Gardena District, twelve miles or more away. Work on the canal was slow and intermittent, chiefly for lack of funds. About 1903 the engineers discovered that the best land in the District could not be irrigated at all unless the plans were greatly changed. Thereupon a new system of construction was adopted following a different route. Not till 1904 or later was water in the canal applied beneficially to any acreage in Washington except in trifling quantities. Long before that time, beginning in 1880 or earlier and continuously thereafter, irrigators in Oregon had been appropriating to themselves the waters of the river above the Red Bridge. We turn at this point to a consideration of the acts of appropriation, their nature and effect, in an endeavor to ascertain whether they were legitimate or wrongful. For more than fifty years before the filing of this suit irrigators in Oregon at seasons of shortage maintained crude or temporary dams across the Walla Walla River close to the Red Bridge. During the low water period the effect of the dam was to turn the waters of the river away from the channel of the Tum- a-lum into the channel of the Little Walla Walla, where they were used for agricultural, domestic and kindred purposes. A small quan- tity of water necessary to supply the right of the East Side Ditch has been permitted to go by the dam without interference. With that exception, which is negligible, all the waters have been diverted with- out interruption and without protest for more than fifty years. Was this a wrong to Washington ? "Before this court can be moved to exercise its extraordinary power under the Constitution to control the conduct of one State at the suit of another, the threatened invasion of rights must be of serious magnitude and it must be established by clear and convincing evi- dence." New York v. New Jersey, 256 U.S. 296, 309; North Dakota v. Minnesota, 263 U.S. 365, 374; Connecticut v. Massachusetts, 282 U.S. 660, 669; Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496, 521. The Master has found: "There is no satisfactory proof that to turn down water past the Red Bridge in Oregon during the period of water shortage would be materially more advantageous to Washington users than to permit such water to be applied to surface irrigation in Oregon." This is so because of the nature of the channel of the Tum-a-lum River. During the period of water shortage, only a small quantity of water would go by if the dams should be removed. There is evidence that this quantity, small at the beginning, would be quickly absorbed and lost in the deep gravel beneath the channel. Experiments have proved that it would not reach the, McCoy Bridge, only a few miles down the stream. As to this the Master finds: "The channel of the Tum-a-lum River between the Nursery Bridge [which is close to the Red Bridge] and the McCoy Bridge [farther down] is an extremely wasteful chan- nel. Water turned past the Red Bridge sinks and becomes part of the underground waters." "To limit the long established use in Oregon would materially injure Oregon users without a compensating benefit to Washington users." These findings are well supported by the evi- |