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Show 130 UPDATING THE HOOVER DAM DOCUMENTS whether an equitable division of the unappropriated water of the River could be decreed in a suit in which the United States was a party (Arizona v. California, 298 U.S. 558 (1936)). C.2.1 Colorado River Basin Background The Special Master's Report reviews the geography of the Colorado River Basin, the history of the Colorado River, pertinent legislation, the major works in the Lower Basin and their operation, the irrigation projects and districts, Indian Reservations and other water users in the Lower Basin, and discusses the mainstream water supply. C.3 Mainstream Supply The Special Master received evidence of estimates of future supply of mainstream water which will be available for consumptive use in the Lower Basin (Special Master's Report, page 99). "Arizona and the United States take the position that it is neither necessary nor useful to attempt to predict the future Lower Basin supply in order to adjudicate this case. California, on the other hand, urges that supply should be estimated and this estimate used as the basis for decision. Nevada has also presented an estimate of future supply." The Special Master concluded that a prediction of the future supply of Lower Basin mainstream water would be irrelevant to the legal issues involved in this case, and, moreover, would not be sufficiently accurate to shed light on any equitable considerations which might bear on the decision. Thus no attempt was made to predict future supply in this report. The Special Master's reason as to the irrelevancy of future water supply estimates was that Congress and the Secretary of the Interior have established a formula for the apportionment of mainstream water among the three States of the Lower Basin with geographic access to the Colorado River: namely, Arizona, California, and Nevada. This formula allocates certain percentages of the available supply in any given year to each of the three States. Since the formula is not derived from supply and since it operates on whatever the supply happens to be in any given year, the Special Master concluded there is no need to predict future supply in order to determine how that supply is to be apportioned. In other words, the decree recommended by the Special Master states exactly how water is to be divided among the three States in the future, and provides for any supply situation which may develop. This it was held unnecessary to predict future supply conditions in order to adjudicate this case. The Special Master concluded as follows: "...This case involves a statutory, not an equitable, apportionment and that statutory apportionment applies irrespective of supply..." (Special Master's Report, page 100). California had contended that the future Lower Basin mainstream supply will not exceed 5,850,000 acre-feet per annum and that the proposed apportionment to California would result in severe curtailment of existing uses, including those of The Metropolitan Water District which serves Los Angeles and other cities on the southern California coastal plain. This contention, said the Special Master, resulted from California's deduction of evaporation and channel losses. The Special Master stated: /'...Even assuming that such a supply would result in this curtailment, a supply sufficient to satisfy 7,667,770 acre-feet per annum of consumptive uses in the Lower Basin would fulfill all of California's existing uses, (e.g., 4,483,825 maf/yr) ...This is so because consumptive use is defined as water diverted less return flow to the River which can be used by another project in the Lower Basin or in satisfaction of the Mexican Treaty...Since consumptive use is all water diverted less return flow, and return flow becomes available for consumption once it returns to the mainstream, supply and consumptive use will be approximately equal" (Special Master's Report, pages 103-104). The Special Master noted: "The supply of available water in the Colorado River has in the past been substantially larger than the demand for it; in short, every project received all the water it requested. In such circumstances it is not surprising that a great deal of water has been wasted, as is apparent, for example, from the very large unused runoff |
