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Implicit in the very breadth of the posposed bill - the attempt to inventory all federal rights based on the Property Clause of the Constitution - is the fact that the government is prepared to claim such federal rights in connection with all federally-owned and withdrawn lands that have never been in state or private ownership. Outside of the original 13 states and Texas, then, such federal rights potentially exist without regard to whether the jurisdiction follows an appropriative or riparian system for the determination of surface water rights. Federal reserved rights claims have been upheld by the courts exclusively in the western states ~here the appropriation system predominates. Under this system, the first basic principle is that the beneficial use of "ater, not land ownership, is the basis of the right to use water. Another major precept is that priority of use, not equality of right, is the basis for the division of water among appropriators, priority meaning a time priority, a ranking of each use ac- cording to the date of its beginning.14 Therefore, features of the reservation doctrine - namely, that the reserved right is not dependent upon the application of water to beneficial use, that the right is not lost by nonuse, and that the water right has priority from the date of the creation of the reservation and is therefore senior to all appropriations of other uses under state law thereafter made, necessarily impose great uncertainty into the existing system for deter- mining rights to the use of water in these western states. However, where priority of use in time has no significance, as in cornmon law riparian jurisdictions, federal reserved rights are, quite simply, completely incongruous. Uotwithstanding this incongruity, the Supreme Court in Arizona v. California has recognized federal reserved rights in a State (California) which holds riparian rights as superior to appropriative rights. The relationship between reserved rights and riparian rights recognized by state law has not been adjudicated and the Supreme Court has not been concerned with reconciling the federal reserved rights it formulated with state rights, riparian or appropriative. The precedent this may hold for riparian states in the east and south is uncertain. In most jurisdictions, a riparian land owner has rights merely by the fact of being riparian and such rights continue regardless of whether they are exercised. For all practical purposes, the land always was and will continue to be riparian and has the same rights attached to it regardless of its landowners use or other landowners' competing uses. Disputes concerning competing uses are resolved in these jurisdictions, assuming the competing users satisfy the prerequisite of being riparian, by state law delineation of priority of importance among those uses and the state determinations of reasonable amotmts available for those uses in relation to those amounts devoted to other uses. ~he federal interposition of resolution by priority dates is completely antithetical to established riparian doctrine, and puts the resolution of these questions beyond the reach of state laws. Thus, when the federal goverrunent claims a "priority" date, it makes a claim presently without legal significance in riparian jurisdictions. Because of the complete incongruity of riparian and federally reserved water rights, one can only speculate concerning how they would be reconciled. It would perhaps be urged by the government that as a matter of federal law, the riparian rights would be inferior to reserved rights unless actually put to use before the date of the reservation. Riparian rights would thus be forced into an appropriative 14. National Wat~r Commission Study at 30. (8)