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Show CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE THE GILA VALLEY PROJECT The proposed Gila Valley project calls for water from the main stream of the Colorado River, to be taken from the east end of the Imperial Dam of the Ail-American Canal now being constructed, for the ultimate irrigation of approximately 585,000 acres of land situated in the valley of the Gila River, which is a tributary of the Colorado. The prosecution of this project would be by units, both in point of location and of time. The water required would be in excess of 2,000,000 acre-feet per year, and the total cost approximately $80,000,000. The first unit will comprise about 150,000 acres and the cost will be about $20,000,000. The project has not been expressly authorized by any act of the Congress. A proposed contract has been drafted between the United States and the Yuma-Gila irrigation district of Arizona, the Secretary of the Interior to sign for the United States. The contract relates to the first unit and is drawn under the Reclamation Act of 1902, the amendments thereto, and the Emergency Appropriation Act of 1935. The W. P. A., which is the administering agency of the Emergency Appropriation Act, has allocated to the Reclamation Bureau $2,000,000 with which to begin work. Bids will be In shortly. The representatives of the protesting States oppose Federal aid to this project for the following reasons^ 1. Arizona should receive no Federal aid for this or any other water project sourcing in the Colorado River system until she first accepts the Colorado River compact. Arizona never has ratified the compact which has been ratified by every other State in the Colorado River Basin and which divides the waters of the river system between the upper basin to which the protesting States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming belong, and the lower basin, to which California, Nevada, and Arizona belong. The compact contemplates that the States of the upper basin shall divide among themselves their common present allocation of /,500,000 acre-feet a year, and that the States of the lower basin should do likewise with their common present allocation of 8,500,000 acre-feet a year, and similarly such parts1 of the "surplus" water (all waters in excess of the combined 16,000,000 acre-feet already apportioned) as in 1963 may be apportioned to their particular basin. One of the principal purposes of the compact is to protect the protesting States in respect to their present; and future allocations against the acquisition of priorities that might be asserted against their basinal allocation by the States of the lower basin. It contemplates that Arizona, like California and Nevada, shall take her water, not out of the allocations made and to be made under the compact to the upper basin but out of those to the lower basin in which she belongs. Arizona, by not ratifying the compact, denies and repudiates the interbasinal division of the water made by the compact and thereby questions the legal effect of water appropria- |
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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] : |