 Riparian rights had been challenged by a controversial state amendment passed that year, which provided that "the water resources of the State be put to "beneficial use"" and that "the right to water... does not and shall not extend to the waste or unreasonable use... of water" and the Gin Chow case was the first serious legal test of the amendment.Five years later "Gin S. Chow v. Santa Barbara" was settled in the California Supreme Court in favor of the city.The court determined that "the waters to be impounded and taken by the defendants are extraordinary storm waters of the river and not a part of the usual and customary flow of the stream" – essentially, the diversion did not have a negative effect on downstream landowners since these floodwaters would have flowed into the ocean anyway.