Natoma Water & Mining Co. v. Hancock

35 P. 334, 101 Cal. 42, 1894 Cal. LEXIS 984
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedJanuary 5, 1894
DocketNo. 14847
StatusPublished
Cited by12 cases

This text of 35 P. 334 (Natoma Water & Mining Co. v. Hancock) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Natoma Water & Mining Co. v. Hancock, 35 P. 334, 101 Cal. 42, 1894 Cal. LEXIS 984 (Cal. 1894).

Opinions

Beatty, C.J.

This is an action to enjoin the appellants from diverting water from the South Fork of the American river at a point immediately above the dam of the respondent, and the principal question involved in the case may be stated as follows: If a prior appropriator of water constructs a dam across the bed of a stream for the purpose of raising its surface to a level which will cause it to flow into the head of his ditch, does he thereby acquire such an exclusive right in the bed and banks of the stream as far as the slack water extends above his dam that he can enjoin a subsequent appropriator of the surplus from tapping the stream, and diverting such surplus at any point above the dam and below the head of the slack water?

The decree of the superior court, from which the defendants appeal, cannot be sustained without affirming this proposition, as will clearly appear from a statement of the case.

The South Fork of the American river is a considerable stream heading in the high Sierras, and like other mountain streams varies greatly in volume from year to year, and from season to season. It reaches its lowest stage in each year towards the end of the dry season, and when the rains begin (usually in the fall) its flow increases in proportion to the amount of precipitation. Ordinarily it reaches its highest stages during the winter and early spring, at which period it is subject to heavy floods. After the rains cease in the spring its volume subsides, but its flow is maintained by the melting snows at a comparatively high stage until the latter part of the summer. These are features common to all the streams flowing from the Sierras to the Sacramento valley and are matters of universal notoriety. Such being the case, [44]*44it is evident that an appropriation covering the entire flow of the stream at its lowest stages may leave a large surplus of water at flood, or even ordinary stages.

The plaintiff in this case in the year 1851 gave notice of its intention to divert and appropriate, for the purpose of placer mining and irrigation, enough of the waters of the South Fork to fill at all times a canal eight feet wide and four feet deep, with a current running ten miles per hour. In pursuance of this notice it proceeded to construct a canal ten or fifteen miles in length, but not of the capacity mentioned in its notice. Its present capacity, as found by the court, is six feet wide at the bottom, eight feet wide at the top, three feet deep, and with a grade or fall of four feet to the mile. In seasons when the water has been unusually low in the dry summer months, the capacity of the canal was sufficient to take all the water of the river, but ordinarily, at the lowest stages of the stream, considerable quantities of water are discharged over the dam after the canal is filled.

The system of headworks by which the plaintiff diverts water from the river is of the ordinary type. The upper section of the canal, for a distance of about three hundred yards, is of considerably greater capacity than the canal proper, and is furnished with waste-gates and sand-gates for the discharge of silt and surplus water. At the lower end of this larger section, and at the head of the canal proper, is a gate by which the influx of the water is controlled. By means of a dam across the stream, a short distance below the head of the canal, the water is raised to the proper level to fill it. This dam, which is of stone, is about three hundred feet long on its crest. Neither the findings nor the evidence show what its height is; but, according to the only testimony on the point, it sets back the water about three-quarters of a mile—say three thousand feet, or ten times the width of the dam, and twenty times the mean width of what plaintiff calls its pond. The crest of the dam is about ten inches lower than the level at which the [45]*45water must be held in order to turn a full supply into the head of the plaintiff’s canal, and it appears from the evidence that the dam cannot be made permanently higher without endangering the head of the canal and its banks in times of flood. Ordinarily the amount of water flowing in the stream is so large that the permanent dam holds it at a sufficient height for plaintiff’s purposes; but as the water falls with the advance of the dry season, and especially during years of extraordinary scarcity, it is necessary to add a false crest of lumber, or riprap and gunnysacks, by which the dam is raised so as to prevent any water from passing over it.

Disregarding some minor facts and some qualifications which it will be more convenient to state in connection with another branch of the case, it may be said that the foregoing statement applies to the whole period of time from the completion of the plaintiff’s dam and ditch in 1852 or 1853 down to the trial of this action. The plaintiff has at all times diverted water to the full capacity of its canal, and applied the whole of it to beneficial uses for mining and irrigation. It still requires, for irrigation and other useful purposes, all the water so diverted, and, as against a subsequent appropriator, has an undoubted right to continue such diversion unmolested and undisturbed, except in so far as a lawful appropriation and diversion of the surplus at a point above its works may involve the necessity of altering and perfecting the appliances which have thus far proved sufficient to fill its ditch.

The question is, whether it is any infringement of this right of plaintiff for the defendants, in order to appropriate the surplus and divert it to an irrigating ditch on the opposite side of the river, to tap the stream above the dam and below the head of the slack water?

There can be no question as between the parties to this action that the defendants have a perfect right to appropriate such surplus by any lawful means of diversion; and the only question is whether the plaintiff can shut them out from access to the stream at all points [46]*46between, the upper and lower ends of what counsel call its pond.

The plaintiff’s canal is on the south side of the river. The defendants, or some of them at least, are successors in interest to the owners of a mining and irrigating ditch on the north side which was originally constructed and used as early as 1854, and was known as the Boyd’s Bar ditch. In March, 1854, the plaintiff entered into a written agreement with the proprietors of the Boyd’s Bar ditch, by which it granted to them the right to “ put in, insert, and maintain in the dam of said Hatoma Water and Mining Company” a box of sufficient size to supply their ditch, reserving the right, in case of a deficiency of water to fill its own canal, to close the gate of the Boyd’s Bar ditch, and keep it closed while such deficiency continued.

In pursuance of this agreement the predecessors of defendants put in a box two feet square on the north side of the river, and a few feet above plaintiff’s dam, through which they have ever since drawn water to supply their ditch. In 1887 the defendants posted a notice of their intention to enlarge their ditch to a capacity of two thousand inches, the diversion to be made at the Hatoma dam. In accordance with this notice they had completed the proposed enlargement up to within a short distance of the dam when this action was commenced for the purpose of enjoining them from “ completing the construction of said ditch, and tapping the said South Fork of the American river at the plaintiff’s dam, and from taking water therefrom or from any point above said dam,” etc.

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Bluebook (online)
35 P. 334, 101 Cal. 42, 1894 Cal. LEXIS 984, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/natoma-water-mining-co-v-hancock-cal-1894.