OCR Text |
Show re-open the trial and take additional evidence; these motions have been denied. New Mexico moved to re-open the trial and take additional evidence on the present use of water from the Gila River System; this motion has since become moot. As ultimately submitted, the action really presents a number of different but related controversies among the parties. First, there is the mainstream controversy, involving as parties Arizona, California and Nevada. Arizona claims the right to use 2.8 million acre-feet of water in the Colorado River plus half of "surplus." This claim is based on what Arizona conceives to be a mandatory division of water made by Congress in the second paragraph of Section 4(a) of the Boulder Canyon Project Act. Existing projects in Arizona consume somewhat less than half of this amount of water. Arizona expects to use most of the presently uncommitted water which she claims for a new project, called the Central Arizona Project, to provide water for irrigation in a large portion of central Arizona. California, on the other hand, claims that existing mainstream projects exhaust the safe annual yield (i.e., the dependable supply) of water in the Colorado River and that, accordingly, there is no supply available for new projects in Arizona. California argues for an allocation to Arizona of approximately 3 million acre-feet of water from all sources in the Lower Basin, both mainstream and tributaries. Under California's method of system-wide accounting, Arizona's share of the total Lower Basin apportionment would be in large part exhausted by her uses on the Gila River System, and California would be free to use most of the water available in the mainstream. Perhaps the most crucial issue in the case arises from these conflicting views, an issue that is summarized by this |
Source |
Original Report: State of Arizona, complainant v. State of California, Palo Verde Irrigation District, Imperial Irrigation District, Coachella Valley County Water District, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, City of Los Angeles, California, City of San Diego, California, and County of San Diego, California |