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,002'$'55 .. . > ~ ". limitations. Section 46-206 provides that unused diversions must be returned to the parent stream unless it is more than 100 feet wide, in which event "not more than seventy-five percent of the regular flow shall be taken". Section 46-265 states that owners of any irrigation ditch or canal shall return the unused water to the stream from which it was taken or to the Missouri River. Ground Water Until recently, the Nebraska Legislature had not adopted nor affirmed any system of rights to ground water; therefore, this state derived its ground water use rules from case law and two common law theories. The first test was reasonableness of use. When supply was readily available, a land owner could withdraw and use water for any beneficial purpose, although such use was re- strained to the over-lying land if diversion to out~lying land would injure another user. The second doctrine, correlative sharing in time of shortage, recognized that water moves from under the land of one owner to others and required allover-lying landowners to share proportionally in a dwindling supply. Prior to the 1975 session of the Nebraska Legislature, Ne- braska had only rudimentary beginnings of ground water use legis- lation. An optional permit program for municipal wells had been enacted and there is a well spacing statute calling for a minimum distance of 1,000 feet between a municipal well and any well serving industry, irrigation, or another municipality. Irrigation wells on neighboring lands must, in general, be separated by a distance of 600 feet. Only one act (Section 46-636) considered the problems of interference between ground and surface water users and it is extremely narrow in application, pertaining only to 2-37