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Show 9 in staggered ( often eight- and- a- half day) rotations. 23 This allowed an efficient amount of water to be utilized in a sequence that enabled irrigators to pass around the inconveniences of night and Sunday watering. As in the development of water resources, local church officials were called upon to ensure the fairness of the distribution system, placing the authority of their position squarely behind the customary procedures by which water distribution worked and mediating controversy when procedures broke down. 24 Blending Legal Institutions With Experience A natural development which followed cooperative institutions in the construction and administration of water systems, was the concept of a community water right. The Mormon pioneers had a social heritage that dealt with water issues based on the common law system. The common law water right allowed an individual to use water only so long as the other landowners adjacent to a stream did not suffer a diminishment of their access to the stream. By contrast, the very nature of irrigation called for water to be used consumptively. With limited exceptions it is impossible to return irrigation water undiminished in flow to the stream. Rather it is led to the desired place of use and consumed. The pioneer leaders did not, however, throw out the entire common law treatment. Portions of the heritage were adapted to work in an arid environment. No one individual could divert and use water in an amount that would injure or weaken the community. The individual was recognized as having a right to utilize ( consume, but not waste) the water resource, but the same right was accorded to other members of the community. In this sense the community's interest in water right was recognized as superior to the individual right. Speaking of this community approach to irrigation and water use in the Utah Valley area, Maass and Anderson state that: When the first settlers diverted streams for irrigation, the water they abstracted was considered the property of the community of farmers that built the ditches or of the larger municipality. Individual rights were not recognized as such, each settler's interest being considered part of the community right. 25 In theory at least, no single individual could profit at the expense of the community. 26 Thus, the pioneer experience developed customs, traditions, laws, and social practices that asserted that the individual water user had the right to use water. He also had a responsibility to use it in a manner consistent with the public interest. Just as important to the pioneering process was the " ibid., p 26. Also Arthur Maass and Raymond L. Anderson, The Desert Shall Rejoice, p 344. Emphasis added. In Utah Valley most of the irrigation companies use a rotation system to distribute water to farmers. This system was developed in the early days as a more economical and convenient method than continuous flows, which would have resulted in streams that were to small to be usable in many cases and in each farmer's having the nuisance of constant water management. 24 Leonard J. Arlington, Great Basin Kingdom, pp 46, 89- 91. 25 Arthur Maass and Raymond L. Anderson, The Desert Shall Rejoice, p 343. Emphasis added. Leonard J. Arlington, Great Basin Kingdom, Chapter VI. |