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 insecurity that they feel in the present system of water distri- bution. Provision is made for a meeting of delegates from the various irrigated districts in the valley and for alternate repre- sentation in case a proprietor or tenant is unable to attend. Voting is proportional to the size of an estate and the “hours of water” which correspond thereunto, Proprietors of small patches of land are permitted to consolidate their votes in order to obtain representation.

The second document is a report approved by the delegates named for the general meeting, a report that is designed to change the law of the turno in the Copiapó valley. The first part has to do with losses in time sustained through delay in the arrival of the water from up valley owing to seepage and the natural time it takes for upstream water to reach a point downstream when the river bed is dry and must be filled before a flow begins. The second part establishes conditions for the taking of water. Four periods are established in which to calculate the loss of each district: the turno of January 1, that of April 1, that of July 1, and that of October 1. All persons using an irrigating ditch are under obligation after taking out their share to leave the inlet blocked off, under penalty of a fine of ten pesos for each offense. Al industrial establishments are to take water for the operation of their machinery when the flow from the city reaches the district in which they are located and must well secure the inlets and commit no abuse, under pain of a fine similar to that indicated above. Attention is called to the lack of a law for the use of the water in industrial establishments of the valley and at the railroad stations; and to the need of “repairs” to the river bed itself in order presumably to conserve the flow. Especially significant is Article 6, which proposes that the change inau- gurated by the resolution in question should be for one year by way of experiment, with the implication that abuses or defects would be remedied by new measures.

The procedure which these two documents indicate must be repeated whenever the disposition of the cultivated land or increase and decrease of the inhabitants or changes brought about by floods have so altered the irrigated land in relation