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Show CALIFORNIA 693 land containing percolating water, which feeds a surface stream and those who have acquired riparian or prescriptive rights in said stream," where the use of percolating water on the overlying land would deplete the surface stream to the injury of those having rights therein. The relative rights in Hudson v. Dailey where determined and adjusted by recognizing the close analogy between overlying percolating water rights and riparian rights in streams, and by applying their common concepts to percolating waters feeding the stream and to the waters of the stream itself.161 The result of the California decisions rendered after the adoption of the correlative doctrine of percolating water rights has led to a considerable degree of coordination of rights in surface and ground waters that constitute a common source of water supply. One common supply is said to be formed where surface waters and ground waters are physically so related that portions of the aggregate depend for their replenishment upon other portions, or suffer a diminution in quantity by reason of the substantial depletion of other portions. The principle of extending the protection of water rights to the sources of supply is an essential feature of coordination of rights in interconnected supplies. Another essential feature is that correlative overlying and riparian rights and appropriative rights that attach to one portion are made applicable, so far as the circumstances permit, to the aggregate supply. Thus waters of a surface stream, ground waters that constitute the underflow, and ground waters that feed the stream and those that flow from it, so far as they 161 The reasoning of the court in establishing this important principle was as follows: "The owner of land has a natural right to the reasonable use of the waters percolating therein, although it may be moving through his land into the land of his neighbor, and, although his use may prevent it from entering his neighbor's land or draw it therefrom. This right arises from the fact that the water is then in his land so that he may take it without trespassing upon his neighbor. His ownership of the land carries with it all the natural advantages of its situation, and the right to a reasonable use of the land and everything it contains, limited only by the operation of the maxim sic utere tuo ut alienum non laedus. It is upon this principle that the law of riparian rights is founded, giving to each owner the right to use the waters of the stream upon his riparian land, but limiting him to a reasonable share thereof, as against other riparian owners thereon. We think the same application of the principle should be made to the case of percolating waters feeding the stream and necessary to its continued flow. There is no rational ground for any distinction between such percolating waters and the waters in the gravels immediately beneath and directly supporting the surface flow, and no reason for applying a different rule to the two classes, with respect to such rights, if, indeed, the two classes can be distinguished at all. Such waters, together with the surface stream supplied by them, should be considered a common supply, in which all who by their natural situation have access to it have a common right, and of which they may each make a reasonable use upon the land so situated, taking it either from the surface flow, or directly from the percolations beneath their lands. The natural rights of these defendants and the plaintiff in this common supply of water would therefore be coequal, except as to quantity, and correlative." 156 Cal. at 628. |