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The La Plata River and Cherry Creek Ditch Company, a Colorado corporation, owned a
ditch by which the company diverted from that river in Colorado water for irrigation. The company filed
suit which charged that the defendants, Hinderlider, State Engineer of Colorado, and his subordinates,
had administered the water of the river as to deprive the company of water which it claimed the right to
divert. A mandatory injunction was sought.
A compact, approved by Congress,
had been signed between the states of Colorado and New Mexico, regarding the usage of the Plata River.
The state engineer of Colorado had diverted water away from the ditch and had done so according to the
compact. The Ditch Company believed that through an act of 1898 it possessed vested rights to the water.
The Supreme Court disagreed and declared that the rights were equitable only and that the Ditch
Company could claim no more water than what was equitably theirs. The Court also stated that, “For
whether the water of an interstate stream must be apportioned between the two States is a question of
‘federal common law’ upon which neither the statutes nor the decisions of either State can be
conclusive.”
Full text: Hinderlider v. La Plata
River and Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304 U.S. 92 (1938)
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