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Show 500 INTERSTATE ADJUDICATIONS a mere question of local private right and involves a matter of state interest, and must be considered from that standpoint. Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., decided this day, [206 U.S. 230]. This changes in some respect the scope of our inquiry. It is not limited to the simple matter of whether any portion of the waters of the Arkansas is withheld by Colorado. We must consider the effect of what has been done upon the conditions in the respective States and so adjust the dispute upon the basis of equality of rights as to secure as far as possible to Colorado the benefits of irrigation without depriv- ing Kansas of the like beneficial effects of a flowing stream. A little reflection will make this clear. Suppose the controversy was between two individuals, upper and lower riparian owners on a little stream with rocky bank and rocky bottom. The question properly might be limited to the single one of the diminution of the flow by the upper riparian proprietor. The lower riparian proprietor might insist that he was entitled to the full, undiminished and unpolluted flow of the water of the stream as it had been wont to run. It would not be a defense on the part of the upper riparian proprietor that by the use to which he had appropriated the water he had benefited the lower proprietor, or that the latter had received in any other respects an equivalent. The question would be one of legal right, narrowed to place, amount of flow and freedom from pollution. We do not intimate that entirely different considerations obtain in a controversy between two States. Colorado could not be upheld in appropriating the entire flow of the Arkansas River, on the ground that it is willing to give, and does give, to Kansas something else which may be considered of equal value. That would be equivalent to this court's making a contract between the two States, and that it is not authorized to do. But we are justified in looking at the question not narrowly and solely as to the amount of the flow in the channel of the Arkansas River, inquiring merely whether any portion thereof is appropriated by Colorado, but we may properly consider what, in case a portion of that flow is appropriated by Colo- rado, are the effects of such appropriation upon Kansas territory. For instance, if there be many thousands of acres in Colorado destitute of vegetation, which by the taking of water from the Arkansas River and in no other way can be made valuable as arable lands producing an abundance of vegetable growth, and this transformation of desert lands has the effect, through percolation of water in the soil, or in any other way, of giving to Kansas territory, although not in the Arkansas Valley, a benefit from water as great as that which would enure by keeping the flow of the Arkansas in its channel undiminished, then we may rightfully regard the usefulness to Colorado as justifying its action, although the locality of the benefit from the flow of the Arkansas through Kansas has territorially changed. Science may not as yet be able to give positive information as to the processes by which the distribution of water over certain territory has operation beyond the mere limits of the area in which the water is distributed, but they who have dwelt in the West know that there are constant changes in the productiveness of different portions of the territory, owing, apparently, to a wider and more constant distribution of |