OCR Text |
Show 244 Colorado will result in a depletion of the flow into Lake Mead by a substantially smaller quantity of water. Secondly, the United States' suggestion would violate the interpretation of Section 4(a) proposed in this Report, an interpretation to which the United States herself agrees. Thus Section 4(a) limits California to 4.4 plus half of surplus out of the total consumptive use of water diverted from the mainstream; it establishes a mainstream, not a system-wide, method of accounting. But the United States' suggestion would import tributary considerations into the Section 4(a) limitation. In the example, there are only 7.7 million acre-feet of consumptive uses of water diverted from the mainstream and Section 4(a) would limit California to 4,500,000 acre-feet of this. However, the United States' solution, because it takes tributary uses into account, would result in California receiving 4,550,000 acre-feet of consumptive use, 50,000 acre-feet more than she is permitted to take under Section 4(a). The reason for the existence of this body of available water which cannot be utilized by any of the interested states under the contractual apportionment created by the provisions in question is quite clear. Articles 7(d) and 5 (a) dictate that Arizona and Nevada cannot receive mainstream water to the extent that they deplete the tributaries above Lake Mead. But California cannot use this water that is denied to her sister states because the statutory limitation on her consumption is based on consumption of mainstream water only. Under Section 4(a), California cannot receive more mainstream water because of depletions on the tributaries even though, under the Arizona and Nevada contracts, those states receive less. In other words, because of the lack of correlation between the Arizona and Nevada contracts on one hand and the California contracts on the other, all of the apportioned water physically available for consumption cannot be legally utilized. |
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 |