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Show ELEMENTS OF WATERCOURSE 53 acres. The stream flowed after rainfall, from 1 to 22 times a year, from "a day or two" to "a good while," at more or less regular seasons. The evidence was uncontradicted that the flow occurred with sufficient regularity, one year after another, to make it valuable and useful for agricultural purposes. This, said the Texas Supreme Court, satisfied every legal requirement as to permanence of source of water supply. It showed the waters of the creek to be not mere diffused surface waters, but those of a natural watercourse to which water rights, whether riparian or by appropriation, attached. The viewpoint that snow and rainfall sources that yield large quantities of water in regular seasons are sufficiently definite and permanent to serve as elements of a watercourse is often a rational one under typical southwestern conditions, in an area distant from sources of supply in high mountains. The situation that prevails in parts of the Southwest is well portrayed in a periodical of the Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agriculture, issued in the summer of 1959.157 Under the caption "Saving Floodwaters," the article stated that much of the limited rainfall-almost totally lost through runoff-that occurs in the Southwest might be held in the area in which it falls. Specifically, the annual precipitation of 7 to 15 inches in the Tucson, Arizona, area falls largely in the summer and winter, much of it in small, local but intense thunderstorms. About 95 percent of the water from intense storms promptly runs off. Steep slopes and straight stream channels develop high water velocities and heavy sediment. The water runs into the river channels in abrupt wave movements, causing flash floods. "In Walnut Gulch watershed near Tombstone, Arizona, a dry streambed became a raging torrent in 17 minutes of rainfall, with 20,000 cubic feet of water racing by per second." Ways of making beneficial savings of the runoff are suggested. Precipitation Runoffs from rainfall and melting snow have been recognized in many jurisdictions as definite and permanent sources of water supply of water- courses. Although the decisions are not harmonious, this is apparently the majority viewpoint when runoffs from substantial areas are in litigation. Majority viewpoint respecting watershed runoff.- Thus, the courts speak of "rains and snowfall" in the watersheds of streams;158 and "run-off from the usual, and annually recurring fall of rain and snow."159 Volume of runoff is sometimes a factor. For example, the Nevada Supreme Court agreed that a watercourse could be supplied at certain seasons from snows on the watershed mountains, as distinguished from occasional bursts of 157 U.S. Dept. Agr., "Agricultural Research," August 1959, p. 16; findings of R. V. Keppel and J. E. Fletcher. 158 In re German Ditch & Res. Co., 56 Colo. 252, 271,139 Pac. 2 (1913). iS9Lindblom v. Round Valley Water Co., 178 Cal. 450, 453, 173 Pac. 994 (1918). |