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, defendants : the United States of America and State of Nevada, interveners : State of Utah and State of New Mexico, impleaded defendants : report / Simon H. Rifkind, special master

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238 Mead to users in Nevada aggregate 300,000 acre-feet of consumptive use, the full contract allotment. It will be noted that the present Nevada contract does not call for delivery of any surplus. If thereafter a consumptive use from the Virgin River in Nevada were to occur which reduced the flow into Lake Mead by 50,000 acre-feet, the Secretary's obligation, under his contract to deliver water to Nevada from Lake Mead, would be reduced by this amount, and this would result in the cancellation of deliveries to those junior-most Nevada users who had been receiving the last 50,000 acre-feet under the contract, even though the supply of Lake Mead water was sufficient to satisfy all demands.89 This would be true despite the fact that the Secretary has absolutely no control over consumptive uses on the Virgin River. For these junior Nevada users, the Nevada contract cannot be regarded as one for permanent service. Since Section 5 requires the Secretary's water delivery contracts to be "for permanent service," the contract provisions in question are in violation thereof. The requirement of permanent service has no antecedent in the prior Reclamation Acts, and the legislative history sheds very little light on its meaning. Clearly a contract for a stated term of years would not be for "permanent service." However, the general context suggests that Congress intended to do more than outlaw term contracts. This requirement was placed in the Project Act also to ensure that deliveries of water from Lake Mead would be on a stable and annually re- 89 Con sumption of water on any particular tributary above Lake Mead affects the supply of water in Lake Mead and hence the amount of water that can be released for consumption each year. But it is only one of many factors that affect supply, and is clearly not among the most important ones, which are the mainstream flow into Lake Mead and storage from prior years. Thus, it is quite likely that the Secretary would be able to release the same amount of water for consumption from the mainstream in successive years despite an intervening project which depleted the flow into Lake Mead from one of the tributaries.