OCR Text |
Show 175 shall be apportioned to the State of Nevada 300,000 acre-feet, and to the State of Arizona 2,800,000 acre-feet, which, combined with 4,400,000 acre-feet which the State of California will use, completely exhausts the seven and one-half million acre-feet apportioned in perpetuity to the lower basin. "The second proposal in my amendment is that the State of Arizona may annually use one-half of the surplus or unapportioned water, which is likewise a corollary to the proposal made by the Senator from Colorado, which likewise disposes of the total quantity of surplus or unapportioned waters in the lower basin."33 To maintain that Congress intended to adopt, in Section 4(a), the Compact concept of apportioning all of the water uses in the entire Colorado River System, in the Lower Basin, requires that I attribute to Congress an intent to deprive two of the states having Lower Basin interests of any participation in the Lower Basin apportionment. Such a deprivation would have divested even perfected rights in New Mexico and Utah. In the light of the fact that Congress expressly protected perfected rights in Section 6, it is extremely unlikely that Congress intended to divest such rights in Section 4(a). Moreover, it is preposterous to suggest that such a result would have been accomplished with the active support of Senator Brat-ton 3i of New Mexico, one of the principal architects of Section 4(a). If Congress had intended to adopt the system wide method of accounting used in the Compact, it would have divided the III (a) and (b) apportionment of appro-priative rights made by the Compact among all five states 8s;0 Cong. Rec. 459-460 (1928), Availability of Article III(b) Waters For Use in California: Legislative History of Section 4(a) (submitted by the California Defendants) [hereinafter cited as "Calif. Legis. Hist."] pp. 148-149. 34In 1933 Senator Bratton was appointed to the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and, in 1953, he became Chief Judge. |
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 |