Board of Directors of Turlock Irrigation District v. Fair

VAN DYKE, P. J. The board of directors of Turlock Irrigation District, as trustees and officers of an improvement district within the irrigation district, known as Improvement District No. 14-A, brought this action for declaratory relief. The board asked for a judgment declaring the rights, duties and obligations of the parties to the action with respect to repairing the portions of a pipeline which the board in its complaint alleged to have been damaged through the construction and use of certain roads crossing over the pipeline. The action was brought against Homer and Margaret Fair and against the county of Stanislaus. A like action was brought by the board against the city of Ceres and others, and the two actions were consolidated for trial. Similar judgments were rendered and from portions of those judgments the board appealed. The appeal of the board against the city of Ceres has been heretofore decided and is reported in 116 Cal.App.2d 824 [254 P.2d 907], under the title of 11 Board of Directors of the Turlock Irrigation District v. City of Ceres, et al.”

Generally, the situation described in Board of Directors etc. v. City of Ceres, supra, applies to both actions and it is unnecessary here to do more than to refer to that opinion. The trial court in both cases held that certain public ways crossed over the easement belonging to the improvement district in which it had installed an irrigation pipe below the surface of the ground. In the reported case these public ways were within the limits of the city of Ceres. In this case the public ways lie without those city limits and are public roads of Stanislaus County. The trial court decreed the district to be the owner of an easement for the maintenance of its pipeline along a parcel of land 10 feet in width and extending 5 feet on each side of the center line of the pipeline, together with the usual maintenance rights appurtenant to such an easement. The court further decreed as follows:

“That the owners of the property along and adjoining said pipeline, or over whose property said easement may pass, or on whose property the same may encroach, have not given up any other rights to their respective property, but that all such owners retain the right to subdivide their property for residential purposes and to install the necessary streets, roadways and alleys for that purpose and to travel upon the said roadways, streets and alleys across the pipeline and to open the same for public travel.”

[835]The court also decreed as follows: