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Show 296 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER Limitation Act (she calculated it as 5,485,000 acre-feet), but said that the Statutory Compact was too generous to Cali- fornia. The Court refused leave to file the bill, saying that the United States was a necessary party. Work on the projects continued. Hoover Dam commenced to generate power in 1937. California power users built trans- mission lines at a cost of over $60,000,000 to make good on their fifty-year power contracts, which obligate them to pay another $200,000,000. The Colorado River Aqueduct was completed at a cost of over $200,000,000, and commenced deliveries in 1941. The All-American Canal, costing ultimately over $70,000,000, first delivered water about the same time. Congress, of course, knew all about these projects and their size, through appropriation acts and otherwise. Events of 1944 In 1944 three related events occurred. Arizona belatedly passed an act purporting to ratify the Colorado River Compact, after announcing still newer inter- pretations of it which she knew California had not accepted and would not accept. These now included the assertion that all the in (b) water was to be found flowing in the Gila River, out of California's reach, and that Arizona's "beneficial con- sumptive uses" should be measured, not as California was re- quired by the Project Act to measure hers, in terms of "di- versions less returns to the river," but in terms of "man made depletion of the virgin flow of the main stream." This would give Arizona, without charge under the Compact, the right to about a million acre-feet of so-called "salvaged water." Arizona obtained a Hoover Dam water delivery contract, of controversial validity and uncertain meaning, from Secre- tary of the Interior Ickes, for 2,800,000 acre-feet, which dis- claimed, however, any attempt to classify this "wet water" under the Compact or to impair California's contracts. The State Department announced the terms of a proposed treaty with Mexico. This was indorsed by Arizona and the Upper Basin states, opposed by California and Nevada. In effect, it granted 1,500,000 acre-feet per annum of Colorado River water to Mexico in return for Mexican concessions on |