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Show DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRINCIPLE 521 is responsible for the administration and distribution of water in his division.12 The State Engineer and the division engineers are authorized to issue orders with respect to partial or total discontinuance of the use of water not applied to beneficial use or the use of water required by senior appropriators, the release from storage of illegally stored waters, the movement of water involved in plans for augmentation, the installation of measuring devices, and entry upon private property to inspect the use of water.13 The Wyoming procedure is an adaption of the Colorado system. The State Engineer has general supervision over water division superintendents, and the latter over water district commissioners. Their authority extends to the regulation and control of storage and use of water under all rights adjudicated by the Board of Control or the courts, and under all permits approved by the State Engineer, whether adjudicated or not.14 An unusual feature of the Wyoming system-not duplicated elsewhere in the West-is the dual relationship of the State Engineer to the four water division superintendents, all five of whom are constitutional officials.15 In the supervision of diversion and distribution of water, the State Engineer is chief.16 But in adjudicating water rights, the State Engineer and the superintendents are coequal members of the Board of Control,17 except that the State Engineer is president of the Board.18 He has one vote, and he can be, and sometimes is, outvoted by the superintendents. Various methods of administering water rights and distributing water are found in the statutes of most Western States. Many of the systems were taken, in whole or in part, from Colorado and Wyoming. Some statutes authorize the State administrator to create water supervision districts only when and as the need arises. This depends in some instances on receipt of a petition from a specified percentage of water users affected. Methods of selecting water- masters, commissioners, or patrolmen, as they are variously termed, and of distributing the costs of supervision, vary from State to State. The primary duty of the watermaster is to distribute, under the supervision of the chief administrator or an intermediate superintendent, the water of streams within his district to those who are entitled to receive it. He is the stream policeman. In order to prevent unauthorized diversions of water, he usually has authority to open, close, adjust, and lock headgates. In various States he has the power to make arrests. Persons dissatisfied with any act of a 12Id. § 148-21-17(1). The division engineer, with the approval of the State Engineer, may establish one or more field offices within his division and appoint a water commissioner for each such office. Id. § 148-21-9(3). 13Id. § 148-21-35. 14 Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 41-57 (1957). ls Wyo. Const, art. VIII, § § 2, 4, and 5. 16 See Wyo. Const, art. VIII, § 5; Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 41-57 (1957). 17 See Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 41-165 et seq. (1957). 18 Wyo. Const, art. VIII, § 5. |