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<br /> <br />managed and not improperly exploited. Yet this decision in the Hawthorne <br />case would appear to immunize the United States as a property owner from <br />the effect of these necessary regulations. It must be obvious to anyone that <br />the regulations cannot possibly be effective unless all water users are sub- <br />ject to the same control. If the United States, for instance, is one of <br />several property owners whose lands overlie a common underground water <br />reservoir and all of the other property owners are subject to State regu- <br />lations but the United States is not, then it is clear that the United States <br />can, if it sees fit to do so, take all of the water from the underground basin <br />for its own use. This, of course, would leave all of the other property <br />owners without any water - and also without recourse. <br /> <br /> <br />Still another example of Federalism in water law is the assertion <br />of the Department of Justice in the Fallbrook case, now pending in the <br />United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Southern <br />Division, that the United States has a paramount interest in the waters of <br />the Santa Margarita River above and beyond any interest which would be <br />recognized under California law. One of the grounds given to support this <br />contention was that most of the water of the stream originates in a United <br />States forest reserve. This last contention of the Department of Justice <br />was rejected by the trial judge, Honorable James M. Carter, United States <br />District Judge at San Diego, last August. Doubtless the case will be ap- <br />pealed and if the contention of the Department of Justice should eventually <br />become the law of the land, then 1 venture to say that practically all of <br />the presently undeveloped waters of the Western States would become the <br />property of the United States Government because most of those waters <br />originate in mountain areas where the Federal Government owns most of <br />the land. The result would be obvious - future water resource development <br />in the Western States would be no longer regulated by the States themselves <br />but by a collection of bureaucrats in Washington. <br /> <br />These and many other examples of the growth of Federal authority <br />in the field of water resources development have recently been very well <br />described and analyzed in an excellent address by Mr. Clarence A. Davis, <br />former Under-Secretary of the Department of the Interior, at the 1958 <br />annual meeting of the American Bar Association in Los Angeles. Mr. Davis <br />entitled his address "Federal Encroaclunent on State Water Rights". Copies <br />of the address have been prepared by the Irrigation Districts Association of <br />California, which publishes the Western Water News, and can be obtained <br />from the office of that Association at 945 Pacific Building, San Francisco. <br /> <br />******* <br /> <br />-23 - <br />