When proposed and built this dam on the lower Susan River just below where Willow Creek feeds into it was controversial. Nothing truly unusual about since water has and will be a heated issue.
When the Associated Colonies of New York proposed their puritan community of Standish in the Honey Lake Valley, they created the Colonial Irrigation Company to handle the complex water right issues of Susan River, the main water source for Standish. The community had a European design, wherein the residents resided in a clustered village, but tended to their farms/livestock that surrounded the village.
Whatever the case may be, in November 1897, the Colonial Irrigation Company began work on the controversial Colony Dam on the Susan River.. The construction of the dam outraged their neighbors downstream in the Tule District, who claimed it obstructed their water flow and riparian rights. The Tule folks took the matter to court and not only asked for an injunction, but demanded the $12,000 dam be removed as a nuisance.
Lewis Brubeck, who owned the Smith place in the Tules (now a part of the Fleming Unit of Fish & Game), also filed a separate lawsuit against the Company in 1898, as the waters of the river had been diverted, never reaching his property. The Brubeck verdict was important to the Tule people, for while Brubeck only received a damage award of $750, the court placed a restraining order against the Company, preventing them from irrigating any other lands until Brubeck’s lands were thoroughly irrigated. It was a major court ruling, that with future lawsuits would bring about the landmark adjudication of Fleming v Bennett filed in 1934.