OCR Text |
Show -8- posed to ours. I have noted what you say about the care with which you claim to have safeguarded the rights of Arizona in making the contracts in question and the great benefits and advantages which you claim Arizona will enjoy under these contracts. As to those matters, we are frankly skeptical. We do not believe that our interests have been properly considered or adequately protected. Having the constitutional right to settle certain questions by interstate compact, we prefer to settle them that way, even though you or some other Secretary may deem himself better qualified to settle them for us. Strange as it may seem to you, Mr. Secretary, Arizona is a sovereign State, equal in sovereignty and dignity to your own State of California or to any other State in the Union. Your State of California may indulge, and has freely indulged, its privilege of criticizing and berating the State of Arizona because of the latter's insistence on its rights, but it ill becomes a high officer of the Government to take upon himself the function of lecturing, admonishing, and reprimanding a sovereign State and its people as you have attempted to do in your letter to me. Such conduct is resented by the people of this State. The Arizona commission is not, nor am I, at all impressed or alarmed by your solemn reminder of the discriminatory and coercive features of the Boulder Canyon project act. We are quite aware of the provision which purports to require us to pay for our own water when used for irrigation in our State, while at the same time, requiring this Arizona water to be delivered free for irrigation n your State. Ths provision in which you seem to take such pride and satisfaction is so outrageously unjust and so obviously unconstitutional that we have not the slightest fear that it will ever be inforced in your administration or any other. Moreover, your assumption that the rights |
Source |
Original book: [State of Arizona, complainant v. State of California, Palo Verde 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, defendants, United States of America, State of Nevada, State of New Mexico, State of Utah, interveners] : California exhibits. |