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Show METHODS OF APPROPRIATING WATER OF WATERCOURSES 393 Circuit held that the district's appropriation had been lawfully made and had vested long prior to enactment of the Wyoming statute of 1939, which provided that no water of Wyoming should ever be appropriated for use outside the State without specific authorization of the legislature. In any event, this statute failed to indicate a legislative intent to disturb vested rights. A judgment of dismissal was reversed.839 Still later, Mitchell district brought an action in a Wyoming State court for a mandatory injunction requiring the State water commissioner to prevent the diversion of water from the North Platte in Wyoming by five canals having priorities junior to the Mitchell appropriation. This found no favor with the Wyoming Supreme Court. The supreme court considered it far from established that if the water commissioner during particular seasons had closed the headgates of junior appropriators in Wyoming, Mitchell would have received the water thus released. That is to say, Farmers Irrigation District of Nebraska, located just below Mitchell on the river, held priority earlier than Mitchell's which must be satisfied before Mitchell could take any water. The Nebraska State administration officials, after the decision in the Soremen case, did not permit Mitchell to take water ahead of earlier Nebraska priorities. Wyoming officials obviously had no jurisdiction over the river waters after they crossed the stateline. Hence, the Wyoming watermaster was not to blame when the district obeyed the Nebraska officials and kept its headgate closed at certain times. It was concluded that no purpose would be served by closing the junior Wyoming headgates at times when Mitchell would receive no benefit therefrom.840 (4) One aspect of the general question of appropriation of water within one State for use in another was touched upon in the decision in a Federal suit which was primarily a contest over rights to the waters of the Rio Grande in the vicinity of El Paso, Texas. However, "along with that are a cluster of satellite controversies."841 A water district that was formed on the Texas portion of the Federal Rio Grande reclamation project contended that its New Mexico appropriation in effect had extraterritorial force, and that it supplanted the law of Texas in control of water brought down the river from New Mexico for use in the Texas part of the project. This contention the court dismissed. Also dismissed was plaintiffs' other view that water rights under the New Mexico appropriation became appurtenant to the project lands in Texas. This proposition, as handled 839Mitchell In. Dist. v. Sharp, 121 Fed. (2d) 964, 967-968 (10th Cir. 1941), certiorari denied, 314 U. S. 667 (1941). 840Mitchell In. Dist. v. Whiting, 59 Wyo. 52, 70-79, 136 Pac. (2d) 502 (1943), certiorari denied, 322 U. S. 727 (1944). 841 El Paso County W.I. Dist. No. 1 v. El Paso, 133 Fed. Supp. 894, 904-905, 923-924 (W.D. Tex. 1955), affirmed in part, reversed in part but not on the matters considered here, 243 Fed. (2d) 927 (5th Cir. 1957), certiorari denied, 355 U. S. 820 (1957). |
