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Show ESTABLISHMENT OF THE APPROPRIATION DOCTRINE IN THE WEST 179 appropriation in favor of existing or proposed public projects. For example, the California Water Code directs the State Board of Water Rights, among other things, (a) to reject an application when in its judgment the proposed appropriation would not best conserve the public interest; (b) in acting upon an application, to consider the relative benefit to be derived from all uses of the water concerned; and (c) to consider an application by a municipality for domestic purposes first in right, "irrespective of whether it is first in time." Priorities in periods of water shortage. -The value to an early appropriator of his priority over later comers is that when the water supply is not enough for all who have rights of use in the common supply, the earliest priority must be fully satisfied before any water may be taken by junior claimants. Yet the constitutions and statutes of certain States provide that when the waters in a particular source of supply are not sufficient to satisfy the wants of all who have rights of use, domestic purposes shall have first preference and agriculture second, regardless of priority in time. Whether or not it is therein declared that compensation must be paid to one whose prior right is thus subordinated, courts that have passed on the question have held that it must be done. Condemnation of inferior uses of water. -In certain States, holders of junior rights for uses of water declared by statute to be superior may condemn appropriative rights already acquired by others senior in time but for inferior uses. Priorities in large developments.-In a few States, the consumers served by large irrigation enterprises are the appropriators with priorities as among themselves; elsewhere, priorities throughout the service area of an enterprise, or throughout a given subdivision, are the same provided that the appropriation made by the organization covers the area in question. Needless to say, enforcement of individual priorities in a large project, if based strictly upon times of beginning use of water by the several consumers, would be indeed a complicated procedure and would not necessarily result in the most efficient use of the available water supply. The trend in water development is toward large projects. One reason is the increasing unavailability of small sources of surface water supply, owing to the steady increase in water uses and in competition for them beginning about the middle of the 19th century. Another of course is increasing cost, resulting not only from the size of undertakings now necessary to develop less accessible supplies, but also from higher and higher costs of labor and materials. In the face of diminishing supplies of unappropriated water and of mounting costs of development and operation-aside from increasingly exceptional instances in which the individual appropriates and diverts from a stream his own independent water supply-some sort of group organization is necessary. In the overall view, appropriations of water are being made, and doubtless will continue to be made, chiefly by high level entities or organizations on behalf of the ultimate consumers. From this it should follow that as time goes on there will be more and more individual rights to the service of water based on |
