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Show 228 PROTECTION OF WATER RIGHTS IN WATERCOURSES While one or all who take water might be sued, the parties who are sued should not be enjoined until it appears that their acts caused the injury complained of. (2) Colorado. There is in this State an elaborate statutory method for establishing priorities to the use of water and for the distribution of water pursuant to decreed priorities.177 Any division engineer or his representative who fails to perform the duties imposed upon him by the statutes, and any person violating the orders relative to opening or closing headgates or using water, are severally guilty of criminal offenses.178 Said the Colorado Supreme Court:179 However, these statutes do not afford a complete and adequate remedy for the injury and loss occasioned by taking water from the streams by a junior appropriator, when it is needed and demanded by a senior appropriator of the same stream within the same irrigation division. While the acts of a water officer in permitting the water to be so taken by a junior appropriator, and the taking by the latter against the order of the former, are crimes, for the commission of which the people may prosecute the respective violators of the law, the result, nevertheless, constitutes a special injury to the senior appropriator. Acts of such character may be enjoined by a court of equity. (3) Texas. The statute governing'appropriation of water authorizes persons and organizations in control of conserved or stored waters to enter into contracts to deliver the same to others and, in doing so, to utilize flowing streams under the supervision of the Texas Water Rights Commission. It is the duty of the district courts to enforce these provisions by issuing "such writ or writs of injunction, mandamus, or other process, as may be proper or necessary to prevent such wrongful acts."180 (4) Oregon. In a situation in which the relative priorities of parties to a controversy had been established, the defendant junior appropriator radically changed his "manner, method, and period of irrigation" without the permission of the State administrator, in violation of the statute. This he obviously had no right to do. Whether or not the plaintiff senior appropriator thereby suffered a detriment to his rights, he was entitled to an injunction against the junior. "He [Lodge, the junior] has sought, in this case, to thrust upon Oliver [the senior] the burden of showing that Lodge's improved system 177Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 148 (1963), as amended, Rev. Stat. Ann. ch. 148 (Supp. 1969). 178Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § § 148-7-21, 148-16-3 (1963) and 148-7-22 (Supp. 1969). ""Rogers v. Nevada Canal Co., 60 Colo. 59, 64, 151 Pac. 923 (1915). This statement, however, may be affected by Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 148-21-35(2) (Supp. 1969) which contains a number of considerations by which the division engineer shall be governed in providing water to senior appropriators at the expense of junior appropriators. 180Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat. Ann. arts. 7547-7550 (1954) and 7550a (Supp. 1970); Tex. Pen. Code Ann. art. 839(1961). |