AZ vs. CA:24 California Exhibits, Vol. XXIV; Miscellaneous

page A97

COMPACT----REPORT BY CARPENTER-COLORADO A97 Turning to the enumeration of the powers granted to Congress by the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, it is enough to say that no one of them by any implication refers to the reclamation of arid land. * * * No independent and unmentioned power passes to the National Government or can rightfully be exercised by the Congress. * * * But it is useless to pursue the inquiry further in this direction. It is enough for the purpose of this case that each State has full jurisdiction over the lands within its borders, including the beds of streams and other waters. [Citing cases.] * * * It may determine for itself whether the common law rule in respect to riparian rights or that doctrine which obtains in the arid regions of the West of the appropriation of waters for the purposes of irrigation shall control. Congress cannot enforce either rule upon any State. * * * One cardinal rule, underlying all the relations of the States to each other, is that of the equality of right. Each State stands on the same level with all the rest. It can impose its own legislation on no one of the others, and is bound to yield its own views to none (Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46, 87-97). In concluding the above decision, the Supreme Court dismissed the case without prejudice to the right of Kansas to institute new proceedings whenever it shall appear that through a material increase in the depletion of the waters of the Arkansas by Colorado * * * the substantial interests of Kansas are being injured to the extent of destroying the equitable apportionment of the benefits between the two States resulting from the flow of the river (206 U. S. 46, 117). The United States has large interests in the form of public lands within the Colorado River area, and has already constructed large irrigation works near Yuma, Ariz., and is engaged in irrigation of large areas along the lower portion of the stream and in the vicinity of the Salton Sea. The seven Colorado River States have already enacted legislation authorizing a commissioner for each of the States, to meet with a representative of the United States, for the purpose of formulating and entering into a compact or agreement respecting the future utilization and disposition of the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. Any such compact will be of no binding force or effect until ratified by the legislatures of each of the States and by the Congress of the United States. The seven State sovereignties have legislated. The governor of each has appointed a commissioner pursuant to the legislation. The governors have collectively waited upon the President and presented their written request for national legislation authorizing the appointment by the President of a representative for the United States. Note.-Since the foiegoing memorandum was written the United States Supreme Court decided, in Wyoming v. Colorado, that in case* between two States both of which recognize the doctrine of prior appropriation as a matter of local law, the Court will apply the fundamental principles of the doctrine in the allocation of the waters of a river common to the two States and will so apportion the dependable average annual flow between the States that the older established uses in both States will receive first protection. The doctrine so announced leaves the Western 77831-48------19