OCR Text |
Show 189 derived from the Upper Division performance of its obligation under Article III(d) of the Compact. However, Congress never clearly understood this, and, indeed, seems never to have considered the relationship of the limitation on California to some actual body of water. Thus Senator Pittman of Nevada reported the governors' recommendation as follows: ". . . when we assembled at Denver the governors of the four upper Colorado River basin states, trying to reconcile the differences on water between California and Arizona, finally made this proposition. California 4,200,000 acre-feet of water, Arizona 3,000,000, Nevada 300,000"60 This report by Senator Pittman did not adopt, or perhaps failed to grasp, that portion of the governors' resolution which expressly found the source of the allocated waters in the Article III(d) obligation of the Upper Division. Instead, Senator Pittman related the limitation to Article III (a), not III(d), as appears from the very next sentence of his statement, which reads as follows: "How did they get at that? Under what is called the seven-state agreement, we find this clause in Article III: "'(a) There is hereby apportioned from the Colorado River system in perpetuity to the upper basin and to the lower basin, respectively, the exclusive beneficial consumptive use of 7,500,000 acre-feet of water per annum, which shall include all water necessary for the supply of any rights which may now exist.' "In other words, those State governors believed that there was only 7,500,000 acre-feet of water to divide, and they proposed to divide it, as I have said B069 Cong. Rec. 10259 (1928), Ariz. Legis. Hist. p. 14. |
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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 |