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Show 92 THE RIPARIAN DOCTRINE bring together at this point some of the facets of this measure vis-a-vis conflicting appropriative rights. States involved.-The States in which these interdoctrinal relationships have been substantially involved are Alaska, California, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington. Riparian rights are recognized in Hawaii, but there is no appropriative system of surface water rights. In the remaining eight States, the riparian water-use doctrine has been generally repudiated, as noted at the outset of this chapter. Cutoff dates.- Some courts have held that riparian rights in lands that passed into private ownership after enactment of the State water appropriation legislation are inferior to appropriators under the statute. In 1926, the Texas Supreme Court indicated that the enactment of the first appropriation statute in 1889 had this effect with respect to State lands.478 Previously, the Texas Legislature had set the cutoff date at July 1, 1895, and has not changed it.479 Construing together the Congressional Acts of 1866, 1870, and 1877,480 the Oregon Supreme Court believed that their effect was to dedicate to the public all rights of the Government with respect to the waters and purposes named-which excluded domestic and associated stockwater use-and to abrogate the modified common law rules with respect thereto so far as applicable to all lands entered after March 3, 1877.481 The United States Supreme Court approved of the reasoning and conclusion of the Oregon court and agreed that the Desert Land Act (1877) applied to public lands entered under other Federal laws, as well as to desert lands.482 But the court left it to each State to determine for itself whether or not riparian rights would attach to such tracts upon passing into private ownership.483 The Nebraska Supreme Court has indicated that a riparian right to the use of a watercourse "may be superior" to a competing appropriative right if the riparian land passed into private ownership from the public domain prior to April 4, 1895, the effective date of the Nebraska irrigation act of 1895, and ™Motlv.Boyd, 116 Tex. 82, 108, 286 S.W. 458 (1926). 479Tex. Laws 1913, ch. 171, § 97, Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann. art. 7619 (1954). In California, it is the relative time of the inception of private ownership of riparian land as compared to the inception of an appropriative right that is important in this respect. See, in chapter 6, "Interrelationships of the Dual Water Rights Systems-The Statutes in Summary: By States-California." See also "Accrual of the Right-Time of Accrual of Riparian Right," supra, with respect to that subject. 480 14 Stat. 353, § 9 (1866); 16 Stat. 217 (1870); 19 Stat. 377 (1877), 43 U.S.C. § 321 et seq. (1964). A8iHough v. Porter, 51 Oreg. 318, 383^07, 95 Pac. 732 (1908), 98 Pac. 1083 (1909), 102 Pac. 728 (1909). 482California Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co., 295 U.S. 142, 160-163 (1935). 483 Following this decision, the California and South Dakota courts asserted that riparian rights in those States attached to lands patented after 1877 as well as before, as discussed at note 72 supra. |