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Show 298 APPROPRIATION OF WATER administrative law in 1903,385 almost coincidentally with publication of the Department of Agriculture's report. In the same year, neighboring Idaho also enacted an administrative statute.386 In California, however, it was more than a decade after issuance of the Government report before the Water Commission Act was passed. Even after enactment of the strongly contested California bill in 1913, so much opposition continued as to cause the legislation to be withheld by referendum. It was finally approved by vote of the people in 1914.387 Nebraska had followed Wyoming more closely in 1895.388 Arizona enacted a centralized administrative procedure in 1919.389 The last of the remaining western statutes providing procedure for appropriation of water under centralized administrative procedure was enacted by Alaska in 1966.390 Water Rights Administration Administrative Control of Surface Water Rights The changeover to administrative control of new appropriations.-(\) Beginning of public control. In the last decades of the 19th century and early in the present one, the growth of water development enterprises, particularly irrigation, in various parts of the West called for both protection of existing claims of appropriative rights and efficient means of acquiring new rights. This was not possible under the inadequate procedures for posting and filing claims, with no public supervision whatsoever. Echoes of this were heard in various Western jurisdictions. The disfavor in which these procedures were held was emphasized with candor, clarity, and vigor in the 1901 California report of the Department of Agriculture.391 It became increasingly evident that if the potential of the West's water resources was to be realized in the developing economy, something had to be done about public control of these resources and of their utilization. Necessarily, efficient public control went beyond legislative declarations as construed by the courts in individual controversies and as enforced by their decrees. It invoked continuing action by the executive arm of the State government, through the agency of administrative organizations equipped to find facts and to act upon them. It called for such action by applying clearly worded directives in exercising the police power of the State for the protection and utilization of public property. The first experiments in State water rights administration were made in Colorado and Wyoming. What they were, and how they differed from each other, are stated immediately below. 385 Utah Laws 1903, ch. 100. 386IdahoLawsl903,p. 223. 387Cal. Stat. 1913, ch. 586. 388Nebr. Laws 1895, ch. 69. 389 Ariz. Laws 1919, ch. 164. 390 Alaska Laws 1966, ch. 50. 391 U.S. Dept. Agr. Bull. 100, supra note 371. |