Holmes

In the year 1908 the Snow Mountain Water & Power Company completed a dam on Eel River, in Mendocino County, by which it impounded and diverted a large part of the stream through a tunnel from the watershed of the Eel River to that of Russian River, none of the water being ever permitted to return to the Eel River watershed. The plaintiff Holmes owns land on both sides of Eel River about two hundred feet below defendant’s dam. The bluffs of the river on plaintiff’s land are from forty to sixty feet high; the land itself is broken, and while some acres of it were cultivated to crops, and some other parts of it set to fruit trees, and other portions were capable of being cleared, cultivated, and also irrigated, none of the water of Eel River had ever been used at any time to irrigate any part of plaintiff’s land, nor does plaintiff appear to have been at any time previous to the trial in a position to use the river water for irrigation. About four years after the completion of the defendant’s dam and the beginning of the diversion of water plaintiff began this action, in which he asks that the company be enjoined from continuing to divert the water of Eel River; and also asks damages…