OCR Text |
Show pally interested in the Lower Basin apportionment being Arizona, California and Nevada. The passage of the Project Act in 1928, containing as it did the ratification of the Colorado River Compact already negotiated by the states, was the last step necessary to give the Compact legal effect. The proposal of the idea of apportionment by Compact as distinguished from apportionment by litigation, the hearings given by the Colorado River Commission, the ensuing interstate negotiations and state ratifications, had occupied a period of some eight years. At the time the Compact went into effect less than half of the estimated total waters of the River System had been put to use, and the respective apportionments made by the Compact to the two Basins were more than sufficient to include the part of the water already put to use in each, so the existing uses of one Basin were not injured by the apportionment to the other. The reason for the negotiation of the Compact lay in the fact that friction was developing among the states over their respective water uses and particularly over the Project now being built, which at that time was only in contemplation. The friction arose from the fear that the principle of priority, or use of water giving priority of right to the waters of the interstate stream, might govern as among the states, in which event it would be possible for some one or two states to acquire, if only a given project or projects should call for water enough, as against the other states, an exclusive right to all of the then unused water of the interstate stream and thus block the further economic development of the other states. Such a result would have been intolerable and all the more so if a particular project were a federal project, built with federal money, which is derived from all the states |
Source |
Original book: [State of Arizona, complainant v. State of California, Palo Verde 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, United States of America, State of Nevada, State of New Mexico, State of Utah, interveners] : |