## Facts

- Gilman and Grace Martiny (plaintiffs) and Arthur Wells (defendant) owned adjudicated irrigation rights in Lemhi County, Idaho, arising from the 1910 Morrow–Wagoner decree for use of water associated with Spring Creek.
- The Martinys’ right carried an 1893 priority and was satisfied by a direct diversion from Spring Creek at their headgate.
- Wells held a junior right (1900 priority) for 100 inches delivered through a ditch that was not a direct diversion from Spring Creek.
- Spring Creek flowed generally parallel to the base of a nearby bluff across a marshy area. Natural swales in the marsh sloped toward the creek and historically carried water from springs and groundwater toward the creek.
- Wells’s ditch also ran generally parallel to the creek, located upslope and separated from the creek by some distance; it intercepted water from springs situated upstream from the Martinys’ diversion point.
- Dikes/levees were constructed across the natural swales so that water moving through the marsh would be held and collected in Wells’s ditch rather than continuing downslope.
- Water shortages for the Martinys typically occurred in early May, before mountain runoff increased creek flow. During four relatively dry years (1960–1963), the Martinys could not fully satisfy their decreed right while Wells had water available in his ditch.
- The Martinys asserted the water captured in Wells’s ditch was tributary to Spring Creek and that Wells’s works intercepted water that would otherwise have reached the creek and been available to satisfy the Martinys’ senior right.
- The parties presented conflicting testimony on how much spring water would naturally reach Spring Creek absent Wells’s ditch and dikes; the watermaster had twice cut a dike to release water.
- Wells contended the ditch collected percolating and spring-fed marsh water that otherwise would seep away or evaporate, and that the water was not part of the creek’s natural flow in a way that made it subject to the Martinys’ senior decree.
- The trial court found that the swamp area held spring water and that only part of the springs’ flow reached Spring Creek; it concluded the water collected in Wells’s ditch was not tributary to Spring Creek and that its best use was irrigation via Wells’s ditch. The court entered judgment for Wells and enjoined the Martinys from interfering. The Martinys appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the water flowing from springs and marshy ground into Wells’s uphill ditch was tributary to Spring Creek, making it subject to administration under the creek’s decreed priorities.
2. Whether the evidence required overturning the trial court’s factual findings about the source, movement, and destination of the water intercepted by Wells’s ditch and dikes.
3. Whether the Martinys, as senior decreed users on Spring Creek, were entitled to injunctive relief (and related relief) against Wells’s collection and use of the ditch water.

## Decision

- The Idaho Supreme Court affirmed the judgment in favor of Wells.
- The Court treated the “controlling issue” as whether the spring and marsh water entering Wells’s ditch was tributary to Spring Creek.
- Because the record contained conflicting evidence and the trial court found that only a portion of the springs’ flow reached Spring Creek, the Supreme Court declined to disturb the trial court’s findings.
- The injunction preventing the Martinys from interfering with Wells’s use of the ditch water remained in effect, and the Martinys were not granted the requested injunctive relief against Wells.

## Legal Principles

- In a dispute between appropriators, a senior water user seeking to restrain another’s diversion must show the challenged water is part of the stream system (i.e., tributary to the decreed stream) in the manner claimed and that the diversion invades the senior’s protected supply.
- Whether particular spring and marsh waters are tributary to a named creek can be a fact-intensive question turning on local hydrology and how the water naturally would move without artificial works.
- On appeal, where the evidence is conflicting, the reviewing court will not reweigh testimony and will uphold the trial court’s findings if supported by substantial, competent evidence.
- The existence of periodic shortages to a senior appropriator does not, by itself, establish that a nearby ditch capturing spring/marsh water is unlawfully taking decreed streamflow; the claimant must connect the alleged interception to water that would naturally reach the creek and be available under the decree.
- A trial court may credit evidence that a marsh holds water and that only part of spring flow reaches the creek, supporting a conclusion that intercepted water was not shown to be tributary streamflow subject to the senior’s decree.

## Conclusion

Martiny v. Wells upheld a judgment that water intercepted from springs and a swampy area into an uphill ditch, aided by dikes across natural swales, was not proven to be tributary to Spring Creek in a way that made it part of the Martinys’ senior decreed supply; because substantial evidence supported the trial court’s findings that only part of the springs’ flow reached the creek, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed denial of the Martinys’ requested injunction and left in place the order barring them from interfering with Wells’s use of the ditch water.


Martiny v. Wells, 419 P.2d 470 (1966)