Moreno Mut. Irr. Co. v. Beaumont Irr. Dist.

• Decision Date: 23 November 1949
• Citation: 211 P.2d 928,94 Cal.App.2d 766
• Court: California Court of Appeals Court of Appeals
• Parties: MORENO MUT. IRR. CO. v. BEAUMONT IRR. DIST. et al. Civ. 3835.

Page 928

211 P.2d 928

94 Cal.App.2d 766

MORENO MUT. IRR. CO. v. BEAUMONT IRR. DIST. et al.

Civ. 3835.

District Court of Appeal, Fourth District, California.

Nov. 23, 1949.

Rehearing Denied Dec. 19, 1949.

Hearing Denied Jan. 19, 1950.

Thompson & Colegate, Riverside, Surr & Hellyer, San Bernardino, for appellants.

John W. Preston, Los Angeles, King & King, San Bernardino, Best, Best & Gabbert, Riverside, for respondent.

GRIFFIN, Justice.

This is an appeal by the defendants Beaumont Irrigation District, a public corporation, and others from a preliminary injunction restraining them, pending trial, from enforcing portions of a certain stipulated judgment between them and plaintiff Moreno Mutual Irrigation Company, a corporation. The latter corporation brought this action to quiet title to alleged water rights and to set aside the stipulated judgment, and sought temporary injunctive relief.

Counsel have adopted, for convenience sake, brief designations of the several parties, title of actions, property involved, and have referred to them as follows:

'(a) 'Moreno' shall mean Moreno Mutual Irrigation Company, a corporation.

'(b) 'Beaumont-Yucaipa parties' shall mean Beaumont Irrigation District, a public corporation, and six other mutual water companies.

'(c) '1926 action' shall mean that certain action No. 24570 brought by the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties against Moreno in the Superior Court of San Bernardino County entitled 'Yucaipa Water Company No. 1, a corporation, et al., plaintiffs, v. Moreno Mutual Irrigation Company, a corporation, et al.

'(d) '1929 Stipulation' means the stipulation for judgment in the 1926 action.

'(e) '1929 Judgment' means the judgment in the 1926 action, copy of which is annexed to Moreno's Second Amended Complaint in the pending litigation as Exhibit C.

'(f) '752 acres' means the land described in paragraph VII of Moreno's Fourth Amended Complaint in this action.

'(g) 'Beaumont-Yucaipa Basin' means that certain area defined in paragraph XXIII of the 1926 Complaint.'

The Moreno Valley lies southwesterly and some miles distant from, the Beaumont-Yucaipa basin, and intervening between Moreno Valley and Beaumont-Yucaipa basin is a range of hills known as the 'bad lands'. According to the pleadings, in 1920, Moreno conceived the idea of developing water in the Beaumont-Yucaipa basin, and transporting it across the bad lands to Moreno Township. To this end Moreno obtained a deed to 752 acres of land in the Beaumont-Yucaipa basin. In 1921, the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties threatened suit and in that year the parties entered into a written agreement refraining from suing for a period of one year. In 1926 the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties instituted the 1926 action, after Moreno had drilled three wells on the 752 acres.

For a better understanding of the issues presented in the 1926 action the complaint alleged generally that the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties were serving water to lands valued then at more than $4,000,000; alleged the ownership thereof by the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties and of all water rights thereunder, the extent of the ownership of each party, and the number of acres irrigated by each; and that the inhabitants of the district, numbering upwards of 2000 people, received their domestic water supply from the district. The complaint particularly averred the existence of a continuous underground body of percolating water in the Beaumont-Yucaipa basin; 'that said basin contains vast deposits of detritus sand, gravel and other alluvial material permeable by and saturated with water, and the geological formation of said basin forms and constitutes a natural subterranean reservoir containing large quantities of sub-surface water throughout its area,' and in paragraph XXIII describes it with some particularity. It then alleges 'That all of the wells * * * described, * * * including the * * * land * * * on which * * * the defendant, Moreno * * * has sunk wells * * * has been, from time immemorial, and still is, sub-surface water in contact and continuity, extending from each of said tracts, to each of the other tracts, owned respectively by said plaintiffs, * * * in said basin, and each of said wells reaches down into, and penetrates said water, and said sub-surface water constitutes and is the common source of water supply for each of the plaintiffs herein * * *' that 'all of the subterranean waters contained in said basin constitute and are an entirely separate and distinct water plane from any water plane in any lands lying outside of said basin, and if any of the waters of said basin are withdrawn therefrom, and used on lands situate on lands beyond said basin, none of such waters, so withdrawn, will return to or reenter said basin;' that 'No surface water nor any water in excess of the amount of water reasonably necessary to supply and maintain the rights, needs and uses of said plaintiffs, exists in said basin, and during no time are the waters of said basin more than sufficient for such rights * * *' that 'for some years last past, the level of the underground water in and throughout said basin, has been rapidly declining; * * * the existing uses made of said water derived from said basin, already exceed the amount of the normal and natural underground water supply thereof, and no unappropriated water now remains in said basin, and none of the subterranean waters thereof can be withdrawn and exported from said basin, without depriving the plaintiffs of the quantity of water in said basin to which the plaintiffs are respectively entitled. * * * That the defendant, Moreno * * * recently entered upon certain lands * * * situate in said basin * * * and sunk at least four wells * * * installed pumping plants for the purpose of pumping water from said wells. That each of said wells so sunk by said defendant is located in said basin, over and in said permeable material, and each of said wells in this paragraph mentioned reaches down into, and penetrates the subsurface waters contained in said material which said water constitutes a common source of water supply for said plaintiffs as aforesaid; that said defendant now intends to immediately construct a pipeline, of water-carrying capacity, sufficient to conduct therethrough at least 500 inches of water, and extending from said wells of defendant to a tract of land, containing approximately 1200 acres of land lying in the township of Moreno * * * and said tract of land is situate far beyond and outside of any of the confines of said basin. That * * * Moreno * * * threatens that it will * * * pump water from said last-mentioned wells, and by means of said pipeline divert and conduct from said wells, and said basin forever hereafter * * * at least 500 inches of water * * * and export all of said water * * * from said basin and discharge all of said water on said tract of land, in said township of Moreno, which said last-mentioned tract * * * lies outside of the watershed, in which said basin is located. That said defendant, Moreno, * * * will * * * export said quantity of water from said basin * * * and * * * which will * * * inevitably * * * deplete, exhaust and destroy the available supply of water of the plaintiffs. * * * That none of the water so threatened to be exported from said basin by said defendant * * * will, if so exported, ever return to said basin * * * and each of said plaintiffs is the owner of the right to have said waters remain in said basin * * * That all of said claims * * * of said defendants * * * to the right to conduct and export any subsurface or surface waters out of and from said basin, to any place beyond the confines thereof, are without right * * * whether the same be surface or subterranean or normal or flood or storm waters'. The complaint asked that each of the plaintiffs be declared to be the owner of the water rights alleged and that title of each of them be quieted and that it be declared that none of the defendants own any right, privilege or easement of conducting or exporting from or out of said basin, any of the waters thereof, to any place beyond the confines of said basin. It is then alleged that the Beaumont-Yucaipa parties, and those served by such parties, depended entirely on the water supply existing in that basin and that there was no surplus of water existing.

Defendant Moreno answered, denied generally and specifically the allegations of the complaint and in particular denied 'that there is no surplus water in excess of the amounts of water reasonably necessary to supply or maintain the rights, needs or uses of the plaintiffs in said basin.' It denied 'that there is no unappropriated water under said basin * * * or under any basin * * * and deny that the wells sunk by these defendants as alleged in paragraph XXVI are sunk into any basin connected with the basin or water supply of the plaintiffs or any of them or touch the main source of water supply of the plaintiffs, and the defendants deny that the tract of land in the district in which the defendant Moreno * * * expects to supply is outside of the basin from which said defendant expects to take and carry water thereto; deny that any of the water underlying the defendant's land * * * is in any manner connected with the water supply or basin from which the plaintiffs * * * draw their water supply.' Defendants then alleged 'that the lands of the plaintiffs and defendants are in the Santa Ana watershed and that the underground water supplies in said watershed lie in the same general basin and that any water extracted from the lands of the defendant Moreno * * * transported to its district and used thereon for irrigation would naturally return to the said Santa Ana basin.' And they deny that the taking of any water would in any wise injure plaintiff's lands.

It appears from an affidavit of one of the engineers then employed to make investigations, which affidavit is filed in the instant proceedings, that there were considerable...