OCR Text |
Show 171 posed compact to which Congress gave advance approval in the second paragraph was for a division of the available annual supply of water so that of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of consumptive use, 4,400,000 is allocated to California, 2,800,000 to Arizona and 300,000 to Nevada; any excess is divided half to California and half to Arizona. There is no water left for any other states. Yet, if read literally, Section 4(a) applies to all of the water "apportioned to the lower basin states by paragraph (a) of Article III of the Colorado River compact." The water apportioned to the Lower Basin by Article III (a) of the Compact is water in the "Colorado River System," which is denned in Article II (a) of the compact as "that portion of the Colorado River and its tributaries within the United States of America." New Mexico and Utah are presently consuming water, as they were in 1928, from tributaries of the Colorado River in the Lower Basin. Thus, a literal reading of Section 4(a) would authorize Arizona, California and Nevada to enter into a compact for the division among themselves of all of the Lower Basin system water, including the water being used by New Mexico and Utah. The unlikelihood of such a congressional intention indicates that Section 4(a) should not be given its literal meaning. Secondly, Section 4(a), if read literally, authorizes a compact which would prohibit the states of the Upper Basin from utilizing any of the water unapportioned by the Colorado River Compact despite the fact that Article III(£) of the Compact specifically contemplates a future apportionment of this water between the two Basins and Congress purported to ratify the Compact in the Project Act. The tri-state compact authorized by Congress in Section 4(a) provides for the division of all "waters unapportioned by the Colorado River compact" among Arizona and California. Yet that phrase, if given its literal Compact meaning, includes all unapportioned water throughout the entire |
Source |
Original Report: State of Arizona, complainant v. State of California, Palo Verde Irrigation District, Imperial 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 |