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Show 176 WATER RIGHTS SYSTEMS PERTAINING TO WATERCOURSES common law of the State.77 Irrigation in Utah began when the Mormon pioneers entered Great Salt Lake Basin in 1847. The earliest legislation made grants of water privileges and authorized public officials to make grants; and a statute passed in 1880 recognized accrued rights to water acquired by appropriation or adverse use, but did not contain a specific authorization to appropriate. (See "Origins of the Appropriation Doctrine-Mormon Coloniza- tion of Utah," above.) It was not until 1897 that Utah, a State in which agriculture is so important and so largely dependent upon irrigation, provided by statute for the future appropriation of water by individuals.78 In the meantime, the Utah courts had recognized the appropriative right,79 and had repudiated the riparian doctrine.80 Irrigation was being practiced in various portions of the Southwest at the time of its accession to the United States, and the beginnings of the practice in some of these areas are lost in antiquity. What statutes in various States did was to give legislative sanction to methods of appropriation already developed by custom. In the States in which there had been little development prior to legislation on irrigation, the legislatures generally adopted the statutes then in effect in other States, so that the initiation of an appropriative right by posting and filing a notice became the general method throughout much of the West. The right became vested by reason of application of the water to beneficial use; and if the appropriator was diligent, his priority related back to the time of taking the first statutory step. Current administrative procedures.- Administrative procedure governing the acquisition, determination, and administration of water rights, in contrast with its early stages, has become highly developed throughout the West. Some indication as to the contrast between these initial statutes and the present "water codes" may be had by reference to California. There the first statute, a part of the Civil Code of 1872, comprised 13 sections which could be reproduced on one printed page. In the present California Water Code, the functions relating to the procedure for appropriating water-corresponding to the 1872 Civil Code-and those for determining or adjudicating water rights and for the distribution of water in watermaster service areas comprise several hundred sections covering many printed pages. Added to all these provisions are others dealing with State policies, State administration generally (even down to regulation of weather modification), witnesses and production of evidence, liability within a watershed, joint use and development, recordation of water extractions and diversions, and supervision of dams, wells, pumping plants, conduits, and streams. Present administrative procedures are based largely upon those which originated in Colorado and Wyoming. The State's supervision and control are usually exercised through the State Engineer or other corresponding official, inOrmsby County v. Kearney, 37 Nev. 314, 352,142 Pac. 803 (1914). 78 Utah Laws 1897, p. 219 et seq. "Crane v. Wimor, 2 Utah 248 (1878). B0Stowell v. Johnson, 7 Utah 215, 26 Pac. 290 (1891). |