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Show APPENDIX IX IX-3 901 OCTOBER TERM, 1962 Syllabus. 373 U.S. ARIZONA v. CALIFORNIA ET AL. ON EXCEPTIONS TO SPECIAL MASTER'S REPORT AND RECOMMENDED DECREE. No. 8, Original. Argued January 8-11, 1962.-Restored to calendar for reargument June 4, 1962.-Re-argued November 13-14, 1962.-Decided June 3, 1963. This original suit was brought in this Court by the State of Arizona against the State of California and seven of its public agencies. Later Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and the United States became parties. The basic controversy is over how much water each State has a legal right to use out of the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. A Special Master appointed by the Court conducted a lengthy trial and filed a report containing his findings, conclusions and recommended decree, to which various parties took exceptions. Held: 1. In passing the Boulder Canyon Project Act, Congress intended to, and did, create its own comprehensive scheme for the apportionment among California, Arizona and Nevada of the Lower Basin's share of the mainstream waters of the Colorado River, leaving each State her own tributaries. It decided that a fair division of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of such mainstream waters would give 4,400,000 acre-feet to California, 2,800,000 to Arizona, and 300,000 to Nevada, and that Arizona and California should each get one-half of any surplus. Congress gave the Secretary of the Interior adequate authority to accomplish this division by giving him power to make contracts for the delivery of water and by providing that no person could have water without a contract. Pp. 546-590. (a) Apportionment among the Lower Basin States of that Basin's Colorado River water is not controlled by the doctrine of equitable apportionment or by the Colorado River Compact. Pp. 565-567. (b) No matter what waters the Compact apportioned, the Project Act itself dealt only with water of the mainstream and reserved to each State the exclusive use of the waters of her own tributaries. Pp. 567-565. (c) The legislative history of the Act, its language and the scheme established by it for the storage and delivery of water show that Congress intended to provide its own method for a complete apportionment of the Lower Basin's share of the mainstream water among Arizona, California and Nevada; and Congress intended the Secretary of the Interior, through his contracts under § 5, both to carry out the allocation of the waters of the main Colorado River among the Lower Basin States and to decide which users within each State would get water. Pp. 575-585. |