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Show APPENDIX IX IX-19 to the Colorado River Compact, § 8 (a), and therefore can do nothing to upset or encroach upon the Compact's allocation of Colorado River water between the Upper and Lower Basins. In the construction, operation, and management of the works, the Secretary is subject to the provisions of the reclamation law, except as the Act otherwise provides. § 14. One of the most significant limitations in the Act is that the Secretary is required to satisfy present perfected rights, a matter of intense importance to those who had reduced their water rights to actual beneficial use at the time the Act became effective. § 6. And, of course, all of the powers granted by the Act are exercised by the Secretary and his well-established executive department, responsible to Congress and the President and subject to judicial review.86 Notwithstanding the Government's construction, ownership, operation, and maintenance of the vast Colorado River works that conserve and store the river's waters and the broad power given by Congress to the Secretary of the Interior to make contracts for the distribution of the water, it is argued that Congress in §§ 14 and 18 of the Act took away practically all the Secretary's power by permitting the States to determine with whom and on what terms the Secretary would make water contracts. Section 18 states: "Nothing herein shall be construed as interfering with such rights as the States now have either to the waters within their borders or to adopt such policies and enact such laws as they may deem necessary with respect to the appropriation, control, and use of waters within their borders . ..." Section 14 provides that the reclamation law, to which the Act is made a supplement, shall govern the management of the works except as otherwise provided, and § 8 of the Reclamation Act, much like § 18 of the Project Act, provides that it is not to be construed as affecting or interfering with state laws "relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation . . . ."" In our view, nothing in any of these provisions affects our decision, stated earlier, that it is the Act and the Secretary's contracts, not the law of prior appropriation, that control the apportionment of water among the States. Moreover, contrary to the Master's conclusion, we hold that the Secretary in choosing between users within each State and in settling the terms of his contracts is not bound by these sections to follow state law. The argument that § 8 of the Reclamation Act requires the United States in the delivery of water to follow priorities laid down by State law has already been disposed of by this Court in Iuanhoe In. Dist. v. McCracken, 357 U.S. 275 (1958) and reaffirmed in City of Fresno v. California, 372 U.S. 627 (1963). In Ivanhoe we held that, even though § 8 of the Reclamation Act preserved state law, that general provision could not override a specific provision of the same Act prohibiting a single landowner from getting water for more than 160 acres. We said: "As we read § 8, it merely requires the United States to comply with state law when, in the construction and operation of a reclamation project, it becomes necessary for it to acquire water rights or vested interests therein. But the acquisition of water rights must not be confused with the operation of federal projects. As the Court said in Nebraska v. Wyoming, supra, at 615: 'We do not suggest that where Congress has provided a system of regulation for federal projects it must give way before an inconsistent state system'. . . . We read nothing in § 8 that compels the United States to deliver water on conditions imposed by the State." Id., at 291-292. Since § 8 of the Reclamation Act did not subject the Secretary to state law in disposing of water in that case, we cannot, consistently with Ivanhoe, hold that the Secretary must be bound by state law in disposing of water under the Project Act. Nor does § 18 of the Project Act require the Secretary to contract according to state law. That Act was passed in the exercise of congressional power to control navigable water for purposes of flood control, •?See, e.g., Ickesv. Fox, 300 U.S. 82 (1937); cf. Bestv. Humboldt Placer Mining Co., 371 U.S. 334 (1963); Boeschev. Udall, ante, p. 472. ""Nothing in ... [this Act] shall be construed as affecting or intended to affect or to in any way interfere with the laws of any State or Territory relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder, and the Secretary of the Interior, in carrying out the provisions of such sections, shall proceed in conformity with such laws, and nothing . . . [herein] shall in any way affect any right of any State or of the Federal Government or of any landowner, appropriator, or user of water in, to, or from any interstate stream or the waters thereof." 43 U.S.C. § 383. |
