OCR Text |
Show COLORADO RIVER LITIGATION 563 of what apportionment, if any, is made 'by the Project Act and what powers are conferred by the Act upon the Secretary of Interior. Unless many of the issues presented here are (adjudicated, the conflicting claims of the parties will continue, as they do now, to raise serious doubts as to the extent of each State's right to appropriate water from the Colorado River System for existing or new uses. In this situation we should and do exercise our jurisdiction. I. Allocation of Water Among the States and Distribution to Users We have concluded, for reasons to be stated, that Congress in passing the Project Act intended to and did create its own comprehensive scheme for the apportionment among California, Arizona, and Nevada of the Lower Basin's share of the mainstream waters of the Colorado River, leaving each State its tributaries. Congress decided that a fair division of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of mainstream water would give 4,400,000 acre-feet to California, 2,800,000 to Arizona, and 300,000 to Nevada; Arizona and California would each get one-half of any sur- plus. Prior approval was therefore given in the Act for a tri-state compact to incorporate these terms. The States, subject to subsequent congressional approval, were also permitted to agree on a compact with different terms. Division of the water did not, however, depend on the States' agreeing to a compact, for Congress gave the Secretary of the Interior adequate authority to accomplish the division. Congress did this by giving the Secretary power to make contracts for the de- livery of water and by providing that no person could have water with- out a contract. A. Relevancy of Judicial Apportionment and Colorado River Com- pact.-We agree with the Master that apportionment of the Lower Basin waters of the Colorado River is not controlled by the doctrine of equitable apportionment or by the Colorado River Compact. It is true that the Court has used the doctrine of equitable apportionment to decide river controversies between States.84 But in those cases Con- gress had not made any statutory apportionment. In this case, we have decided that Congress has provided its own method for allocating among the Lower Basin States the mainstream water to which they are entitled under the Compact. Where Congress has so exercised its constitutional power over waters, courts have no power to substitute their own notions of an "equitable apportionment" for the apportion- ment chosen by Congress. Nor does the Colorado River Compact con- trol this case. Nothing in that Compact purports to divide water among the Lower Basin States nor in any way to affect or control any future apportionment among those States or any distribution of water within a State. That the Commissioners were able to accomplish even a division of water between the basins is due to what is generally known as the "Hoover Compromise." "Participants [in the Compact negotiations] have stated that the negotiations would have broken up but for Mr. Hoover's pro- posal : that the Commission limit its efforts to a division of water 34 E.g., -Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U.S. 419 (1922) ; Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589 (1945). |