OCR Text |
Show 241 that, after the full 300,000 acre-feet of Nevada's Lake Mead water had been appropriated and put to beneficial use, a project was developed on the Virgin River in Nevada that depleted the flow into Lake Mead annually by 50,000 acre-feet. Under the law of prior appropriation, the Virgin River project would be junior to all users of the 300,000 acre-feet. The contract provisions, if enforced, would reverse this order of priority. The users of the last 50,000 acre-feet of mainstream water under the Nevada contract would be deprived of water, while the Virgin River project continued to use water, despite the fact that the tributary user was, under state law, junior to the mainstream users. No more flagrant violation of Section 18 can be conceived. The Secretary has attempted, by his contracts, to intervene within the States of Nevada and Arizona to dictate who shall receive water and in what order of priority. Moreover, in this attempt, the Secretary has adopted a rule of priority exactly the reverse of the state rules; the contract provisions would displace senior downstream users for the benefit of junior upstream users. Since the Secretary's power to make water delivery contracts under Section 5 of the Project Act is limited by Section 18 of the Act, and since the provisions in question violate Section 18, those provisions must be stricken on this ground also. In addition to violating Sections 5 and 18 of the Project Act, Articles 7(d) and 5(a) are inconsistent with the Section 4(a) limitation on California's use of mainstream water, and indeed, defeat the basic purpose of the delivery contracts themselves; namely, to provide for the allocation in fixed proportions among Arizona, California and Nevada of all the mainstream water released for use in the United States. Congress intended, in Section 4(a), to provide for an apportionment of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of consump- |
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 |