Water Is Life

Water Creates Life

In history, great societies have been built near water. Those societies have mastered the power to control water and given life around it. They expanded there societies by spreading water throughout their civilization with aqueducts of Rome and irrigation from the Nile in Egypt. California has built thousands of miles of irrigation to support its society. California’s water resources is a valuable commodity and whoever has control over it has the power over that region.

Water creates life and whoever controls water controls the area. Large land owners with water flowing through their land have the sole right to divert water where they want it to go leaving nothing for the owners downstream, Essentially the owners closest to the source can monopolizing the water. The small farmer that needs irrigated water for their land is without water.

In 1850 California’s first constitution was to legalize the “Riparian” doctrine. The doctrine gave water rights to owners that had water flowing through it to do what they will with the water within reason. In 1851, California legislature adopted the “prior appropriation” doctrine which would allow owners that were already diverting water from the river to legally divert it from the original owners land within reasonable use. At this time, water was controlled and distributed by private parties to San Francisco and Southern California. This was seen as a monopoly.

After the Lux vs Haggin case ruling in favor of Haggin appropriation rights to water, more documents were filed to abolish riparian rights and appropriation rights because it was seen in the big picture as monopoly. In Hundley’s, “American Political Culture and Water Use” they found records of a small amounts of people that filed for appropriation claims on almost all the rivers in California. Therefore, abolishing riparian rights would serve no purpose and would still go to another monopoly. The Stockton daily Independent reports, “Private...