A peculiar situation which has developed at Owens Lake in Inyo County, made it necessary and proper that slight amendment be made to the law of eminent domain. The water of Owens Lake is heavily charged with soda. Some years ago, the Inyo Development Company was organized to recover this soda. The company invested $200,000 in establishing a soda-ash plant at the lakeside. This does not include the cost of building a railroad from the Lake to Mound House, Nevada, a distance of about 400 miles. The investment proved a success. The company harvests as high as 10,000 tons of soda ash a year. As the product is worth as high as $30 a ton at San Francisco, the enterprise adds an important industry to the developed resources of the State. The method of recovering the soda is simple. The water is drawn from the lake into vats, where it is left to evaporate. The soda is then recovered. Owing to the fact that the waters of Owens Lake are constantly receding, a considerable strip of land has, during recent years, been uncovered between the company's holdings near the lake. and the water. The water from which the soda is reclaimed has to be piped over this land. Recently former employees of the Inyo Development Company took up the land lying between the company's property and the lake, and under the name of the Natural Soda Products Company, propose to go into the business of manufacturing soda ash on their own account. Not long since the new company began to complain of the old company's pipe, which crosses the new company's land. The old company saw that it had trouble ahead unless it could condemn a strip of the recently reclaimed land for a pipe line. It was found, however, that there is no law in California by which this could be done. Under the law of eminent domain land could be condemned for almost any other purpose than to establish a pipe line to carry water not to be used for irrigation or domestic purposes. An attempt was therefore made to have the law governing eminent domain amended so as to read that land could be condemned "for oil pipe lines and pipe lines for conducting the waters of any lake which are not fit for irrigation or domestic purposes, and which contain soda or other minerals' or chemical substances in solution, and also pumps and machinery for raising the same and forcing the same through such pipes." This amendment was included in Senate Bill 797, and in the companion Assembly Bill 815. Senate Bill 797 passed the Senate and was referred to the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly, where the amendment providing for the soda water pipe line was added. This bill received a favorable recommendation from the Assembly Judiciary Committee and was returned to the Assembly. And then a very mysterious thing happened. Without apparent reason the bill was referred to the Assembly Committee on Corporations. Provision for soda water pipe lines, so far as the Assembly was concerned, came to a sudden ending.