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

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CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-HOUSE 6. The Government contemplates delivering water to this project free of charge, as far as the water itself is concerned, although subjecting the lands benefited to the burden of construction cost. This exemption of water from charge is in plain violation of the Boulder Canyon Project Act. (See sec. IV (b) of the act; also sec. V.) Important as this may be, the greater issue is whether Arizona is to be permitted to receive water out of the Colorado River system with Government aid without first adhering, as all the other States have done, to the compact. 7. The proposed Federal aid for the Gila Valley project represents a substitute method for an earlier unsuccessful attempt to obtain water from the Boulder Canyon Dam. The first attempt was by a contract which Arizona requested from the Secretary of the Interior for 2,800,000 acre-feet of water per annum. These protesting States opposed that attempt at a hearing before the Secretary, and the Secretary ruled in their favor. The present attempt is simply another effort to enter by a different door. 8. The Congress of the United States, by passing the Boulder Canyon Project Act, put its stamp of approval expressly upon the Colorado River compact, thereby giving it validity and pronouncing its water division between the two groups of States to be just. The Government cannot now, without a breach of faith, lend its aid to Arizona in building up water priorities that she might attempt to assert against the upper States. It is not enough to try to protect the States by language applying to the Gila River project alone, first, because of the legal uncertainty of the attempt and, second, what is wanted is a complete adherence to the compact that would subject all her water priorities wheresoever situated to the compact. This is what all the other Colorado River States have done as to their own priorities. The Congress should expect and exact from Arizona nothing less. The protesting States suggest the incorporation of a proviso following the appropriation item for the Gila Project in the Interior Department bill as follows: "This appropriation shall not become available until and unless the State of Arizona and the States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming shall have entered into a supplemental interstate compact approved by the Congress of the United States whereby the State of Arizona on the one hand and the States of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming on the other shall have and be given the same uses, rights, and interests in and in respect to the waters of the Colorado River system, that they and each of them would have had if the State of Arizona had ratified the Colorado River compact when the other States ratified it, and if said State thereby likewise had become a party thereto; said