OCR Text |
Show (c) "Whether such apportionment be made by compact with the consent of Congress, or by decree of the Supreme Court, the apportionment is binding upon the citizens of each State and upon all water claimants, even where the State had previously granted water rights." (d) "The apportionment may provide either for a continuous equal division of water or for rotation in use of the stream." (e) "As no claimant has any ri";ht greater than the equitable share tc which the State is entitled, no vested right is taken away by the apportion- ment if there was no vitiating infirmity in the proceedings leading up to the compact or in its application." (f) nThe assent of Congress to a compact does not make it a 'treaty or statute of the United States' within the meaning of the Judicial Code, so that a decision of a State court against its validity is not appealable to the Supreme Court, nor is a claim based on the equitable interstate apportion- ment of vater the subject of appeal. However, the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court restraining the State engineer from taking action required by the compact, denied an important claim under the Constitution, which may be reviewed on cer.tiorari. Whether the waters of an interstate stream must be apportioned between two States presents a Federal Question, and the fact that the State s are not parties to the suit does not deprive the Supreme Court of jurisdiction*" It should be noted that in this case the question of whether or not the compact made an equitable apportionment was not raised. 3* ^NATURE OF A COMPACT. Briefly, a compact may be described as an agreement among states effectuated through ratification by the respective legislatures of the signatories, with the approval of the Congress as pro- vided by -the constitution. Such an agreement when relating to water is founded on the premise that no one state, through the use of waters of an interstate river, may exercise exclusive control of a great natural resource which so profoundly affects the economic development in other states; and it is design- ed to meet common problems in a region, or group of states, the solution of which cannot be accomplished under a single state jurisdiction nor without consideration of applicable federal jurisdiction. The development under a federal jurisdiction often impinges upon that under the state jurisdiction. The desirability of preserving the integrity of state water laws, while at the same time giving due recognition to established and applicable principles of federal, jurisdiction in the national interest, presents' a problem in compact mstking of increasing importance to the states* k» BASIC COMPACT PROCEDURE. The basic compact procedure is founded in the federa.1 constitution. Section 10 (2) of Article I of the federal con- stitution provides thatj "No state shall, without the consent of Congress, * * * enter into any agreement or compact with another state * * *." This has been otonstrued to mean that the constitution authorizes a state to "enter into any agreement or compact with another state" with "the consent of Congress." 'This authority is negatively put in order to express the limi- tation imposed upon its exercise. ' |