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Show REPUBLICAN RIVER COMPACT 271 "The compact was negotiated by the three States with a view to apportioning the waters of the Republican Basin for irrigation and related uses. I approve of this purpose and of an interstate compact as a means of making the necessary apportionment. In this basin, as in other parts of the arid and semiarid West, the effective use of water and the control of destructive floods demand joint action by the States working in harmonious relation with the Federal agencies concerned. "It is unfortunate that the compact also seeks to withdraw the juris- diction of the United States over the waters of the Republican Basin for purposes of navigation and that it appears to restrict the authority of the United States to construct irrigation works and to appropriate water for irrigation purposes in the basin. The provisions having that effect, if approved without qualification, would impede the full devel- opment of the water resources of the basin and would unduly limit the exercise of the established national interest in such development. "While I find it necessary to withhold my approval of the legisla- tion in its present form, I would be glad to approve a bill which, in assenting to the compact, specifically reserves to the United States all of the rights and responsibilities which it now has in the use and con- trol of the waters of the 'basin. "Franklin D. Roosevelt "The White House, April 0, 1942." Prior litigation.-In Weiland v. Pioneer Irrigation Company, 259 U.S. 498 (1922), to which reference is made in Article V of the com- pact, the Court, after pointing out (p. 501) that "the essential and substantial issue in the case arose from the assertion by the appellee of the federal constitutional right to transport water, derived from an interstate stream, from Colorado into Nebraska under its priority of appropriation as of 1890, and the denial of this claim by the appellant state officers, based upon the contention that water in natural inter- state streams in Colorado, having been declared by the constitution and laws of that State to be the property of the public, dedicated to the use of the people of Colorado, the right could not be obtained by appropriation and beneficial use, to carry such water into an adjoining State for like use, as against persons desiring to use it in Colorado, even though, junior in point of date of appropriation", held (1) that the question was not "so unsubstantial as to be frivolous", that a dis- position of it was essential to a determination of the case, and that, therefore, the case was properly before the Court for decision on the merits, and (2) that the case was controlled by Wyoming v. Colorado, pp. 665ff post. It affirmed the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals which, as summarized in the Supreme Court's opinion (p. 502), "held that the presence of the state line did not affect the superiority of right and enjoined the Colorado state officials from treating the ap- pellee in the distribution of water otherwise than it would be treated if the canal were wholly within the State of Colorado and all the lands irrigated therefrom were in that State." |