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Show 140 interpretation of the Compact must be confined by this limiting factor. And from this it also follows that the Compact offers no solution to this controversy among states with respect to their Lower Basin interests.10 The text of the Compact makes it abundantly clear that inter-basin, not interstate, relations were the subject matter of agreement. Article II of the Compact divides the entire Colorado River Basin into Upper and Lower Basins, and Article III (a) and (b) apportions the use of water between the two Basins and not among states. This apportionment is accomplished by establishing a ceiling on the quantity of water which may be appropriated11 in each Basin as against the other. Although Article III (a) and (b) is not expressed in terms of appropriative rights, this is the purport of that Article. For example, it is clear that the Lower Basin may utilize and consume more than the 8,500,000 acre-feet of water per annum apportioned to it by subdivisions (a) and (b) of Article III of the Compact, if the water is actually available, but against the Upper Basin it can acquire appropriative rights to no greater quantity than is sufficient to satisfy a consumptive use of that magnitude. This becomes clear from the historical background of the Compact. Throughout the Colorado River Basin, when the Compact was negotiated, the law of prior appropriation governed acquisition of water rights. In 1922, before the opening of the Sante Fe meetings of the Compact commissioners, the Supreme Court had applied the law of prior appropria- 10The extent to which the Compact governs this litigation by reason of references thereto in the Project Act and the water delivery contracts is discussed infra. n"To appropriate water means to take and divert a specified quantity thereof and put it to beneficial use in accordance with the laws of the state where such water is found, and, by so doing, to acquire under such laws, a vested right to take and divert from the same source, and to use and consume the same quantity of water annually, forever, subject only to the right of prior appropriations." Arizona v. California, 283 U. S. 423, 459 (1931). |
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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 |