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Show 12 WAR FOR THE COLORADO RIVER That is, a state should be charged for the amount of water it took from the river and beneficially consumed, less the amount its projects returned to the stream below the places of diversion. The measurement conflict had been one of the main issues of the fight over the proposed Central Arizona Project,3 in which the Upper Basin states had stood with Arizona against California, and it had not been resolved. The negotiators of the Upper Basin Compact favored the Arizona virgin flow theory, and wrote it into the document in Article vi(a) in this way: The [Upper Basin] Commission shall determine the quantity of consumptive use of water . . . for the Upper Basin and for each state of the Upper Basin by the inflow-outflow method in terms of man-made deple- tions of the virgin flow at Lee's Ferry. . .2 California had no wish to oppose the Upper Basin Compact, and would have preferred to help speed it on its way through Congress, but it could not permit the Arizona formula to be used. Such acquiescence would have injured California in its fight against the Central Arizona Project, and would have jeopardized its position before the Supreme Court in the litigation of its controversy with Arizona. California's counsel in Washington, Northcutt Ely, advised the Colorado River Board of California (the agency charged with protect- ing the state's rights in the river) to issue "a dignified but plain statement" on the matter.5 This was done, and its purport was that while California hoped to support the Upper Basin Compact in Congress, it could not "do so if this Article vi(a) is inserted to aid Arizona in her contest with California." When the Upper Basin Compact came before the |
