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Show COLORADO RIVLR LITIGATION 593 propriations. This provision was drafted by the Upper Basin States m order to insure that the condition of the Compact had been met to relieve them from the claims of perfected users below.29 That con- dition was the construction of an adequate storage reservoir against which those claims could be asserted; the Compact has nothing to do with whether rights perfected under state law since 1929 may be ignored by the Secretary in awarding contracts. Section 8(b), which subjects the United States and all users of the Project to any compact allocating among the Lower Basin States "the benefits, including power, arising from the use of water accruing to said States," and subjects such an agreement, if made after January 1, 1929, to any delivery contracts made prior to its approval, is similarly no author- ity for the Court's conclusion. Legislative history is virtually silent as to the reason for giving such contracts precedence, but the provision seems simply to have been intended to promote the entering of con- tracts by insuring their permanence in accordance with the require- ment of § 5.30 There is no indication in § 8(b) whether or not the Secretary is free in awarding contracts to ignore existing appropria- tions ; it merely evidences a policy that rights so perfected as to have been reduced to a contract for delivery at a consideration, whatever the basis on which they should be awarded, ought not to be destroyed by a subsequent interstate agreement. If the statute were completely silent as to whether the Secretary may disregard appropriations, the normal inference would be that Congress did not mean to displace existing law. Enough has been said of the statute's history to buttress this inference beyond question. Moreover, the statute is by no means silent on this matter. The references in § 8 (a) and (b) to "appropriators" of water stored or delivered by the Project, and in § 4(a) to the taking of steps "to initiate or perfect any claims to the use of water" made available by the dam, are only the least evidence.31 Section 14 provides that the Reclamation Law shall govern the operation of Hoover Dam except as the Project Act other- wise provides. Section 8 of the Reclamation Law, 32 Stat. 390,43 U.S.C. § 383, directs the Secretary of the Interior in carrying out his duties under the Act to proceed in accordance with state and territorial laws and declares that nothing in the federal act "shall in any way affect any right of any State or of the Federal Government or of any land- owner, appropriator, or user of water in, to, or from any interstate stream or the waters thereof." Both Representative Swing and Senator Johnson emphasized that this provision was deliberately incorporated into the Project Act to safeguard from federal destruction the rights of the States to their shares of the water.32 This Court made clear in Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U.S. 419, 463, that by thus protecting the rights of any State in an interstate stream Congress intended to leave untouched the law of interstate equitable apportionment. LvanJioe Irrig. Dist. v. McCracken, 357 U.S. 275,291, despite its dictum that § 8 applies only to the acquisi- 20 See Hearings, supra, note 1, at 98, 116, 117. 80 Delph Carpenter said that the Secretary's contracts should be lagged for only a lim- ited period of time in order to give the States complete freedom to agree. Id., at 204. 81 It should also be noted that, as the Master held, § 18, quoted ante, p. 585, clearly leaves each State free to apply its own law in determining rights among users within its borders. iTfoe Court's strained reading of this provision emasculate it entirely and sacri- fices even matters of solely intrastate concern on the altar of federal supremacy. 82 See pp. 604-605, 619-620, aupra. |
