OCR Text |
Show streams, or the regulation of the source of supply of such streams. The question of the authority of the Federal Power Commission to pass upon the rights of States to enter into compacts concerning the use of certain streams in the Eastern States has now been injected into the problem (Con- necticut, Merimac, and Delaware River Compacts.) Colorado River Compact* - This Compact, providing for the equitable di- vision of the waters of the Colorado River system in the United States, was signed by the commissioners representing the States of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Hew Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 24, 1922* and was thereafter ratified by Wyoming on February 25* 1925, by Colorado on February 26, 1925, by Utah on March 13, 1925, by New Mexico on March 17, 1925, by Nevada on March 18. 1925, and by California on April 8, 1925* and promulgated by the President on July 25* 1925* Ari- zona has declined to ratify the Compact to date (1939) or, by self-limita- tion through legislative action., to subordinate itself to the provisions of the Compact, and has asserted that the assured and planned projects in Cali- fornia would absorb all of the additional water made available to the Lower Basin States by the Compact. The Compact apportions in perpetuity, from the Colorado River System to the Upper Basin and to the Lower Basin, respectively, the exclusive be- neficial consumptive use of 7*500,000 acre-feet of water per year. The dividing line between the basins is at Lee Ferry, Arizona, 1 mile below th© mouth of the Paria River. An additional 1,000,000 acre-feet per year are apportioned to the Lower Basin for beneficial consumptive use when the first 7»5OO,OOO acre-feet have been consumed. If the United States should hereafter recognize in Mexico, as a matter of international comity- any right to the use of the waters of the Colorado River system, such v/aters shall be supplied from surplus waters over and above the aforementioned ap portionments. If such surplus waters are insuf- ficient for this purpose, the deficiency shall be borne equally by the Up- per and Lower Basins. The Compact provides that the States of the Upper Division (Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming - not identical with "Upper Basin") vail not cause the flow of the river at Lee Ferry to be depleted below an aggregate of 75*000*000 acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years reckoned in. continuing progressive series* Waters not thus apportioned may be appor- tioned equitably for beneficial use any time after October 1, 1963* The ratification of this Compact was followed by the passage in 1928 of the Boulder Canyon Project Act which provided for the construction of the Hoover Dam and the Ail-American Canal. It also requires California to limit, by statute, her portion of the beneficial consumptive use of the 7*500,000 acre-feet apportioned to the Lower Basin, to J4,lj00,000 acre-feet. This was done later by legislative enactment* °2 Assembly Bill Ho. 1070j California Legislature, passed March l\$ 1929( -113- |