## Facts

- New Escalante Irrigation Company, a senior appropriator, diverted water from the Escalante River to irrigate shareholders’ lands near Escalante, Utah.
- A separate natural drainage, Alvey Wash, did not naturally receive water from the Escalante River.
- Under New Escalante’s historic open-canal, flood-irrigation practices, incidental runoff and seepage from irrigated lands flowed into Alvey Wash and mixed with its natural flow.
- Paul Steed held a decreed, junior water right in Alvey Wash and historically diverted water there, including water that appeared in the wash due to New Escalante’s irrigation inefficiencies.
- In 1982, New Escalante converted from flood irrigation to a pressurized sprinkler system with enclosed pipes, substantially reducing runoff and seepage into Alvey Wash.
- Steed’s estate sued seeking a decree and related injunctive/declaratory relief requiring New Escalante to replace the former runoff/seepage reaching Alvey Wash or to maintain practices producing that flow.
- The trial court denied relief, and Steed’s estate appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether a junior appropriator in a separate natural drainage may compel a senior appropriator from a different stream system to continue inefficient irrigation practices, or to replace incidental return flows, after the senior lawfully increases irrigation efficiency.
2. Whether reduced return flow caused by a senior’s efficiency improvements constitutes a legally cognizable injury to the junior’s decreed right in the receiving drainage.

## Decision

- The Utah Supreme Court affirmed the judgment for New Escalante.
- The court held that Steed had no right to require New Escalante to continue flood irrigation or to replace the runoff and seepage formerly reaching Alvey Wash.
- The court held that New Escalante could improve efficiency without liability to Steed because the change did not enlarge New Escalante’s appropriative right and Steed had no vested entitlement to incidental waste reaching a separate drainage.

## Legal Principles

- An appropriator may increase the efficiency of its water use (including by recapturing, reusing, or preventing losses) so long as it does not unlawfully enlarge its water right or violate decreed or statutory limits.
- A downstream or junior user generally has no vested right to compel continuation of another appropriator’s wasteful practices or incidental return flows, particularly when the reliance is on water generated only by inefficiencies rather than by a natural hydrologic connection.
- A decreed right to divert water from a channel protects use of water that lawfully exists in that channel, but does not necessarily include a right to force an independent senior appropriator to continue contributing incidental flows created by the senior’s method of diversion and application.
- Efficiency improvements that reduce incidental return flows do not, without more, constitute compensable injury to a vested right where the senior’s lawful use remains within the scope of its appropriation.

## Conclusion

The court held that a junior appropriator in Alvey Wash could not require a senior Escalante River appropriator to maintain inefficient flood irrigation or replace diminished runoff and seepage after adopting sprinkler technology, because the junior had no vested right to the continuation of incidental waste flows from a separate stream system.


Estate of Steed v. New Escalante Irrigation Co., 846 P.2d 1223 (Utah 1992)