Riparian lands are irrigated naturally by the waters percolating through the soil and dissolving its fertilizing properties. This is sufficiently apparent from the consequences which ordinarily follow from a continual cessation of the flow of a stream.
If, in accordance with the law, such lands may be deprived of the natural irrigation without compensation to the owners, we must so hold; but we fail to discover the principles of “public policy” which are of themselves of paramount authority and demand that the law shall be so declared.
In our opinion, it does not require a prophetic vision to anticipate that the adoption of the rule, so called, of “appropriation” would result in time in a monopoly of all the waters of the state by comparatively few individuals, or combinations of individuals controlling aggregated capital, who could either apply the water to purposes useful to themselves, or sell it to those from whom they had taken it away, as well as to others.
Whether the fact that the power of fixing rates would be in the supervisors, etc., would be a sufficient guaranty against over-charges would remain to be tested by experience. Whatever the rule laid down, a monopoly or concentration of the waters in a few hands may occur in the future. But surely it is not requiring too much to demand that the owners of lands shall be compensated for the natural advantages of which they are to be deprived.
–Lux v Hagin, the foundational California water law case (paragraphs added; emphasis original).
