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Show CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE money expended comes from the people, comes in part from these protesting States, and that it is unfair to them that what in effect is in part their money should be taken and expended to build up or uphold water priorities that in conjunction with other priorities would be asserted against them in and at the hands of a State that has not yet through the acceptance of the compact been willing to accord to the protesting States the reciprocal protection of the interbasinal division of water that they by the compact offered and still offer to her. The other States have subjected all of their priorities to the compact. Why should not Arizona do the same? 4. Six States have accepted the compact with its interbasin division of water as fair and equitable; and the Congress of the United States, by the Boulder Canyon Project Act, likewise has ratified it as fair and equitable, and has subjected the water interests of the United States in the general Colorado River Basin wherever they may be to its terms and is spending hundreds of millions of dollars on dams and canals built under the act, which in turn is predicated upon the compact. Any other solution of the water problems of the Colorado River system than that of the compact interbasinal division of water is now because of complications practically impossible. No one, unless Arizona, wants any different solution. The Government should finance no water projects in Arizona until that State puts herself in line with other States and with the Government itself by accepting the compact. 5. The proposed contract between the United States and the Gila Valley irrigation district would be illegal if signed. The contract does not purport to be made in pursuance of authority of the Boulder Canyon Project Act, which is the only act of Congress under which the Secretary of the Interior is authorized to dispose of water stored by the dam which has been built under the act. Instead, the contract is made under the Reclamation Act of 1902, with no mention of the Boulder Canyon Project Act, and financed by an Executive money allotment that has been made under the Emergency Appropriation Act of 1935. The water supplying the project would come from the equated flow of the waters stored by the dam. The contract says so. The project would be futile if it could not depend upon this artificially equated flow rather than upon the natural, variable, seasonable flow of the river. The Boulder Canyon Project Act provides that all stored waters snail be contracted for only in accordance with its terms and under the general regulations promulgated by the Secretary of the Interior pursuant thereto, just as in the case of the contracts already made by the Secretary with the various California agencies and entities. Indeed, under the act the Secretary must charge something for the water deliveries to be made under the contracts which he issues. This charge is in addition to any assessment that the Government might make under the reclamation act against the lands benefited by the construction of dams and canals whereby the water contracted for is to be made usable. Section |
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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] : |