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Show 63 disputes. Summarizing the circumstances involved in Wash- ington v. Oregon, the Court said:2U The case comes down to this: The court is asked upon uncertain evidence of prior right and still more uncertain evidence of damage to destroy possessory in- terests enjoyed without challenge for over half a cen- tury. In such circumstances an injunction would not issue if the contest were between private parties, at odds about a boundary. Still less will it issue here in a con- test between states, a contest to be dealt with in the large and ample way that alone becomes the dignity of the litigants concerned. And when the Court denied the relief sought in Arizona v. Cali- fornia, it said that "there is no occasion for determining now Arizona's rights to interstate or local waters which have not been, and which may never be, appropriated."276 While litigation is one method of settling complicated inter- state water controversies, this method has obvious shortcom- ings. It has been said that "Continuous and creative adminis- tration is needed; not litigation, necessarily a sporadic process, securing at best merely episodic and mutilated settlements, which leave the central problems for adjustment unsolved."278 Moreover, litigation between states is often subject to serious and protracted delays.277 And the Court itself has suggested that interstate water disputes might better be solved by com- pact, saying:278 274297 U. S. 517, 529 (1936). STS283 U. S. 423, 463-464 (1931) ; see also Arizona v. California, 298 U. S. 558 (1936). 279 Frankfurter and Landis, The Compact Clause of the Constitution, A Study in Interstate Adjustments, 34 Yaue L. J. 685, 707 (1925). mId. p. 705, n. 87. ™ Colorado v. Kansas, 320 U. S. 383,392 (1943). Similarly, in New York v. New Jersey, the Court said, "We cannot withhold the suggestion, inspired by the consideration of this case, that the grave problem of sewage disposal presented by the large and growing populations living on the shores of New York Bay is one more likely to be wisely solved by cooperative study and by conference and mutual concession on the part of representatives of the States so vitally interested in it than by proceedings in any court how- ever constituted." 256 U. S. 296, 313 (1921). 911611-51------6 |