Armstrong

Statement of the Case

This action was initiated by respondent Tehachapi-Cummings County Water District, in October 1966, seeking an adjudication of the underground water rights in Cummings Basin and an injunction against increasing extractions or diversions of the water pending the lawsuit, a temporary injunction reducing the collective extractions of water to the safe yield, and a permanent injunction to restrict future extractions of water in accordance with the priorities and rights to be determined by the court. It was alleged that the ground water annually extracted by the defendant overlying owners of land in the basin amounted to substantially all of the water extracted from the basin and that the defendants owned substantially all of the rights to pump water from the basin.

The appellant State of California filed an answer on September 27, 1967, alleging that since 1930 it had pumped water from the basin in a reasonable and beneficial manner as needed for the domestic, industrial and irrigation uses of the Tehachapi prison situated at Cummings Valley; that by reason of such governmental use, appellant could not be sued as it had not consented to be sued nor had…