Excerpt from Irrigation Districts in California: 1887-1915

Briefly stated, this act sought to confer on farming communities powers of municipalities in the purchase or construction and the opera tion of irrigation works. Those powers included the right of eminent domain, the right to issue bonds against all of the real property within any area organized into an irrigation district, and the right to tax that property for the payment of the cost of any irrigation works acquired or built, and of their operation. Fifty, or a majority of freeholders owning lands susceptible of one mode of irrigation from a common source, and by the same system of works, were authorized to propose the organization of an irrigation district before the board of super visors of the county in which the lands included should be located. All electors in the area included were allowed to vote at district elections, but it was provided that at least two-thirds of all of the votes cast at an organization election should be favorable to organization in order to carry it, that a majority of all the votes cast at bond elections should approve the bonds submitted before they could be issued, and that two thirds of all votes cast at elections on special assessments should approve such assessments before they could be levied. Full provision was made for the conduct of district elections, for meetings of boards of directors, and for their management of district business, for the issuance and sale of bonds, for the levying, equalization, and collection of assessments, including the sale of property for district taxes and its redemption within twelve months from date of sale, for the adoption of plans of works and for their construction, for the payment of all district expenses, etc. Boards of directors were given full authority to call special district elections on both the questions of issuing bonds and of levying of special assessments. District bonds were made payable in installments from the eleventh to the twentieth year after issue and were to bear interest at the rate of 6 per cent, and it was provided that bonds should not be sold for less than 90 per cent of their face value. In short. The act sought to clothe farming neighborhoods desiring irrigation with full authority at law to acquire by condemnation or otherwise all water rights and irrigation works that a majority of the freeholders and two thirds of the electors voting in any district election in such neighbor hoods should decide in favor of, with the taxing power of the State conferred upon such neighborhoods for financing their acquirement and Operation.

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