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Show Compact, and the Compact's definitions.-/ The "waters" were precisely designated by a perfecting amendment adding "paragraph (a)" expressly "in order to remove any possible misunderstanding regarding the 4,400,000 acre-feet of water" to which California 2/ would be limited out of the Article III (a) waters.-7^ The California Legislature was entitled to rely upon the plain V meaning of this precise description.^ -' See Freund, The Use of Indefinite Terms in Statutes, 30 Yale L.J. 437-38 (1921), pointing out that Congress has a choice of the precision or certainty intended in the use of its words. & 70 Cong. Rec. 459 (1928), by Senator Phipps, author of the first paragraph of § 4(a) and chairman of the Senate committee which held hearings on and reported the bill. Senator Hayden said that the perfecting amendment "makes it even more in accord with the [tri-state compact] amendment that I now offer." Ibid. We are puzzled how Senator Phipps, by any art of a legislative draftsman, could have achieved with any brief reference his objective of referring to Article Ill(a) of the Compact if the plain language of the perfecting amendment which he proposed, and Congress accepted, is now rejected. ¦2/ The Special Master asserts that these words "despite their apparent simplicity cannot bear their plain meaning." (DR 157.) We are therefore not concerned with any initial problem of whether the language of the statute is plain or not (see Bell v. United States, 349 U.S. 8l (1955)) or with any problem of what is the plain meaning (see Federal Power Comm'n v. Panhandle E. Pipe Line Co., 337 U.S. 498 (1949); United States v. United Mine Workers, 330 U.S. 258, 274-76 (1947)). Elsewhere he says that this phrase in the Project Act, "read literally," "means that, of the 7,500,000 acre-feet apportioned to the entire Lower Basin, California's aggregate annual consumptive use shall not exceed 4,400,000 acre-feet" (DR 155). Except in this one instance, the Special Master adheres to the "plain language of the Project Act" (DR l84j see also DR 200). He also rejects an interpretation of § 4(a) offered by the United States as "rewriting the statutory language" (DR 170)* rejects an Arizona interpretation of § 4(a) as in conflict with the "plain language" of the Compact itself (DR 156), and still another Arizona interpretation of § 4(a) as in conflict with the Compact's "unmistakable language" (DR 131)» hence "unacceptable" and "inadmissible" (DR 132). All of these rejected contentions as to the meaning of § 4(a) relate to the problem of its cross reference to the Compact. III-6 |