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Show 100 apportioned. In other words, the recommended decree states exactly how water is to be divided among the three states in the future, and it provides for any supply situation which may develop. Thus it is unnecessary to predict future supply conditions in order to adjudicate this case. California emphasizes that the Supreme Court, in several earlier equitable apportionment cases, has based its decision on an estimate of future supply.20 She argues that the same procedure should be followed in this case. But in those cases, unlike this case, the Supreme Court did not have a flexible formula, established by Congress and the Secretary of the Interior, which could be used to apportion whatever water supply happened to be available in any particular year in the future. Future supply was estimated in those cases, even though, as the Court specifically recognized, the estimates would necessarily be inaccurate, because the Court considered a finding as to supply useful to its decision. Because a flexible formula authorized by Congress and effectuated by the Secretary of the Interior controls this case, the Report does not estimate a supposedly static total supply and allocate fixed amounts of it to each state. Whether the Court itself could have established a flexible formula as an equitable matter to control the interstate apportionment in those prior cases is of no concern here. This case involves a statutory, not an equitable, apportionment and that statutory apportionment applies irrespective of supply. Given the very erratic flow of the Colorado River, which makes it highly unlikely that the supply of water available for consumption each year will be constant, see pages 107-109, 116-118, infra, a percentage allocation not dependent on a fixed supply is more '"Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589 (1945); Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419 (1922). |
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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 |