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Show 202 WATER RIGHTS SYSTEMS PERTAINING TO WATERCOURSES Various modifications through the years in various States, as the result of statutes and court decisions, have been directed toward removal of obstructive aspects of the riparian doctrine. They have accomplished a large measure of reduction in excessive riparian demands upon water supplies and in so releasing, for utilization on nonriparian lands, waters theretofore legally unavailable. This has been done in recognition of rights of reasonable use that had actually vested, and of the fact that new rights in a particular source of supply must necessarily be subject to those validly existing. Some Features of the Conflict Purpose of use of water. -The century-long conflict has not been essentially a struggle between users of water for different purposes. It began with the disputes over mining water rights and extended to industrial and irrigation uses as well. But the miners as a class were not arrayed in reliance upon one water law doctrine as against another, nor were the industrialists or irrigationists later. Despite those individual conflicts between riparian and appropriative claimants of water for different purposes-some of major importance-most of the controversies have been fought out in the agricultural areas between users or prospective users of water for irrigation. Sources of conflict. -As noted above (see "Reasons for the Conflict"), controversies between claimants who invoked different doctrines stemmed from the superiority which the riparian owner enjoyed by reason of the situation of his land on the banks of the stream, which entitled him to have the stream flow to his land. Even though the common law doctrine has been so modified as to allow a reasonable consumption of the water for irrigation, so that the riparian proprietor was required to suffer some diminution of the flow as the result of diversions by other riparian owners, his right to the uninterrupted flow was still good as against diversions to nonriparian lands. When appropriators attempted to make upstream diversions of water that from time immemorial had been flowing to riparian lands, conflicts with the riparian owners ensued, naturally. Bitter conflicts in some areas were precipitated by riparian claims of right to use water wastefully, or to withhold use without sacrificing the right, as against nonriparian diversions for useful purposes. But other conflicts resulted simply from competition between early and latecomers for the use of water supplies of valleys, just as many contests arose in that way between senior and junior claimants of appropriative rights only. Results in the arid States. -The riparian water rights doctrine was generally eliminated in the arid jurisdictions on the ground that it was unsuited to the conditions that obtained there. In several of the States this action was taken promptly, before there had been much litigation over water. It was not taken in Montana until quite late, after more than 90 decisions in water rights controversies had been rendered by the State supreme court.203 And in 203Mettler v.Ames Realty Co., 61 Mont. 152,170-171, 201 Pac. 702 (1921). |