AZ vs. CA:25 California Exhibits, Vol. XXV; Nos. 7501-7859

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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE tions made and to be made in the protesting States of the upper basin, as against water appropriations made and to be made within her own limits. The water that would be used for the project under consideration, and which would be applied by the process of gravity and pumping, would come from the flow in the main river as equated by the great dam built under the Boulder Canyon Project Act- in other words, from water stored by the dam. Arizona has tried hitherto to obtain from the Secretary of the Interior a contract for water from that dam for use in Arizona but failed, upon the opposition of these protesting States, because she would not incorporate in the contract language that would expressly subject herself and all claiming under her at no matter what point on the Colorado River system, unequivocally and without reservation, to the Boulder Canyon Project Act and to the Colorado River compact which the act ratifies and upon which the act is predicated. The Gila Valley project with its proposed contract, already drafted but still unsigned, between the Yuma-Gila irrigation district and the United States, under the Reclamation Act of 1902, instead of a contract*of Arizona herself with the United States under the Boulder Canyon Project Act, would prove, if it could be consummated legally, only a circumvention of these protesting States and of the Government itself-an attempt on Arizona's part to get Boulder Canyon project water indirectly through one of its minor agencies instead of directly in its own name and binding all of its water users who at any point within her boundaries take water from the Colorado River system. 2. Paragraph 34 of the proposed contiact with the Yuma-Gila Irrigation district purports to subject Gila Valley project to the Colorado River compact. Passing by the inadequacy of the language of this paragraph to protect these protesting States in respect even to this particular project it may be said that the mere insertion of this paragraph would not give to the protesting States, with sufficient certainty, adequate protection as against the total appropriations of water made and to be made at all points upon that part of the Colorado River system (main stream and tributaries) lying within the State of Arizona. The Yuma-Gila irrigation district is not the State of Arizona, but only a minor agency thereof, that at most, even with a paragraph adequately worded, could bind only itself and the particular project. What is wanted is the acceptance of the Colorado River compact by Arizona herself in behalf of herself and of all water users claiming under her, to the end that all water rights and projects anywhere and everywhere in Arizona drawing their supply from the Colorado River system would be bound thereby, as are the water rights and projects within the six other Colorado River States. 3. These protesting States do not question the right of Arizona or of those claiming under her to initiate water rights or finance water rights within the State of Arizona if they can finance the same out of their ov/n resources, but the protestants do say that Federal