State v. Rank

• Decision Date: 14 August 1961
• Docket Number: No. 15840.,15840.
• Citation: 293 F.2d 340
• Parties: STATE OF CALIFORNIA, United States of America, et al., Appellants, v. Everett G. RANK et al., Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

293 F.2d 340 (1961)

STATE OF CALIFORNIA, United States of America, et al., Appellants, v. Everett G. RANK et al., Appellees.

No. 15840.

United States Court of Appeals Ninth Circuit.

March 31, 1961.

As Corrected August 14, 1961.

On Petition for Rehearing August 14, 1961.

J. Lee Rankin, Sol. Gen., William H. Veeder, Washington, D. C., Irl Davis Brett, Los Angeles, Cal., and J. O. Reavis, Delano, Cal., Stanley Mosk, Atty. Gen., of California, and B. Abbott Goldberg, Asst. Atty. Gen., of California, Denver C. Peckinpah, Fresno, Cal., Adolph Moskovitz, Sacramento, Cal., Maddox & Abercrombie, Visalia, Cal., for appellant.

John H. Lauten, Claude L. Rowe, Fresno, Cal., for appellee.

Before HAMLIN and MERRILL, Circuit Judges, and POWELL, District Judge.

MERRILL, Circuit Judge.

This case involves the Central Valley project, an important undertaking of the Bureau of Reclamation in California's Central Valley.

Suit was brought by these appellees in 1947 to enjoin Bureau officials from the impounding of water at Friant Dam on the San Joaquin River in contravention of the rights of appellees to the beneficial use of the waters of the San Joaquin below Friant. Since commencement of this suit by individual water users, the City of Fresno has intervened as a plaintiff also asserting rights to San Joaquin waters.¹ We shall hereafter refer to appellees as plaintiffs.

By court order, in 1953, the United States, over its protest, was joined as a necessary party defendant and appears on this appeal as an appellant. In 1951, the State of California intervened and upon this appeal supports the position of the appellants. Also appearing as appellants are the irrigation districts which benefit from the operation of the Friant Dam by the Bureau. We shall hereafter refer to appellants as defendants.

This suit has finally reached this court upon the merits. The district court has granted the plaintiffs an injunction, their right to which is challenged by the defendants.² The issues upon appeal divide themselves into jurisdictional questions and those relating to the merits of the dispute.

The jurisdictional issues are presented by the contentions of the defendants that the United States is an indispensable party; that it has not consented to suit and has been improperly joined; that in its absence the district court was without jurisdiction to entertain the dispute with reference to the operation of the Friant Dam by the Bureau.

Upon the merits, the issue is whether it is permissible for these plaintiffs to interfere by injunction with the public use which the Central Valley project represents. More specific issues are presented by the contention of defendants that the water rights of the plaintiffs, to the extent to which they claim injury, have been taken by the United States through exercise of its power of eminent domain and that the remedy of the plaintiffs is to seek compensation in the Court of Claims.

I. The Facts, the Pleadings and the Decree.

California's Central Valley is an immense elongated bowl approximately four hundred miles in length and at its widest point approximately one hundred miles in width. It is bounded on the north by the Siskiyou Mountains, on the south by the Tehachapi Range, on the east by the Sierra Nevada and on the west by the Coast Range. It includes more than one-third of the State of California.

The northern half of this valley is known as the Sacramento Valley and is the valley of the Sacramento River. This river rises at Mount Shasta and flows south parallel to the Sierra, joining on its course the many great rivers rising in the northern portion of the Sierra.

The southern half of the Central Valley is known as the San Joaquin Valley and is the valley of the San Joaquin River. This river rises in the High Sierra south of Yosemite Valley. Its course at first is to the west. It emerges from the mountains at a point known as Friant, flows out on the floor of the valley and at a point known as Mendota changes to a northerly course. For the purpose of this opinion, we shall divide the San Joaquin into three segments: that to the east of Friant we shall call the "upper"; that between Friant and Mendota the "central"; that below Mendota the "lower."

These two great rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, flow toward each other to join near Stockton. In past centuries their combined flow escaped the valley through a cut in the Coast Range at Carquinez to empty into San Francisco Bay. Today the bay has invaded the valley and a substantial arm, Suisun Bay, lies to the east of Carquinez. It is into Suisun Bay, well within the Central Valley, that the Sacramento and San Joaquin now empty.

The Sacramento River, through its tremendous tributaries from the Sierra, develops a surplus of water. The San Joaquin, on the other hand, fails to produce sufficient water to enable the rich lands of its valley to realize their fertile potentialities. The Central Valley project attacks this problem. Originally projected by the State of California as part of the State Water Plan, it has, through congressional sanction and for lack of state funds, been undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation. Its feasibility was reported to the President by the Secretary of the Interior on November 26, 1935, pursuant to § 4 of the Act of June 25, 1910, 36 Stat. 835, 43 U.S.C. § 413.

The project contemplates the impounding of the waters of the upper San Joaquin at Friant. To this end the United States has acquired, by assignment from the original applicants, applications to appropriate under state law over four million acre feet of water annually.

For the lands of the lower San Joaquin, the project contemplates an exchange of waters from the Sacramento River. This is to be accomplished by pumping Sacramento River water, at a point on its delta near Tracy, into a canal — the Delta-Mendota Canal — which would carry it south to Mendota, where it would be pumped into the bed of the San Joaquin through the Mendota pool. The waters impounded at Friant would be diverted north and south through canals to irrigation districts desperately in need of supplemental water.

Thus the upper San Joaquin is to continue in its natural flow until impounded at Friant. The lower San Joaquin is to be supplied with Sacramento water. The case before us involves the central San Joaquin, the sixty-mile stretch between Friant and Mendota. Plaintiffs claim rights to San Joaquin water upon this segment of the river as owners of lands either riparian to the river or overlying subterranean reservoirs fed by the river. The United States has successfully negotiated contracts with many of the water users on this stretch of the river. Plaintiffs are among those who have refused to enter into such contracts.

The water law of California, to which the Federal Reclamation Act of 1902, defers, § 8, 32 Stat. 390, 43 U.S.C. § 383,³ has been extensively dealt with in the opinion of the district court. Rank v. (Krug) United States, 142 F. Supp. 1, 104-115, 161-165. We note that as distinguished from most western states California does with modifications recognize the common law doctrine of riparian rights. Lux v. Haggin, 69 Cal. 255, 10 P. 674. The riparian and (as to subterranean waters) the overlying landowners have the paramount right to the use of the waters of a stream system. An appropriator of water may reach only that surplus which is not required quired by the riparian and overlying owners.

By constitutional amendment in 1928, the rights of riparian and overlying owners were limited to reasonable use and reasonable methods of diversion with no right to make wasteful use of water.⁴ In its discussion of California water rights, the district court, in its opinion, states at page 162 of 142 F.Supp.:

"The California courts, confronted with the command of the 1928 Constitutional amendment that water should not be wasted, and also with the guaranties of that amendment that existing water rights be preserved to the extent of their present and prospective reasonable and beneficial uses, evolved a type of decree which for the sake of convenience is called a `physical solution.\'

"In essence, such decree is but the conditional injunctive decree of a court of equity. Such decrees in California water rights cases are characteristic examples of the preservation by equity courts of the elements and flexibility and expansiveness so that new remedies may be invented or old ones modified in order to meet the requirements of every case and to satisfy the needs of every progressive social condition."

Further, at pages 163-164, the opinion states:

"The matter of a physical solution becomes a practical problem which will vary with each case. That practical problem is best stated by the question — how can the utmost beneficial use be made of the waters of the particular stream without invading prior vested water rights? If those prior vested water rights can be preserved and satisfied by giving them the water to which they are entitled, and at the same time waste can be prevented by reasonable changes in natural physical characteristics, then, under the California decisions, the court may solve that problem by the use of its injective powers, conditioned upon making those physical changes. The parties seeking to make an appropriation or to take water, in derogation of prior vested rights, can be enjoined from taking water until those physical changes are made. The efforts of the courts of California in imposing conditional decrees of injunction requiring a physical solution have been to, as near as possible, satisfy the prior vested right whether riparian or overlying, and at the same time make available, for appropriation and reasonable and beneficial use elsewhere, all water in excess of that required to satisfy those prior vested rights."

This suit was commenced September 25, 1947. Originally brought in the state courts, it was, on motion of the defendants, removed...