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Show COLORADO RIVER LITIGATION 565 of Article III of the Colorado River compact, j>lus not more than one-half of any excess or surplus waters unapportioned by said com- pact. . . ." And Article III (a), referred to by §4 (a), apportioned in perpetuity to the Lower Basin the use of 7,500,000 acre-feet of water per annum "from the Colorado River System," which was defined in the Compact as "that portion of the Colorado River and its tributaries within the United States of America." Arizona argues that the Compact apportions between basins only the waters of the mainstream, not the mainstream and the tributaries. We need not reach that question, however, for we have concluded that whatever waters the Compact apportioned the Project Act it- self dealt only with water of the mainstream. In the first place the Act in § 4(a), states that the California limitation, which is in real- ity her share of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of Lower Basin water, is on "water of and from the Colorado River," not of and from the "Colorado River System." But more importantly, the negotiations among the States and the congressional debate leading to the pas- sage of the Project Act clearly show that the language used by Con- gress in the Act was meant to refer to mainstream waters only. In- clusion of the tributaries in the Compact was natural in view of the upper States' strong feeling that the Lower Basin tributaries should be made to share the burden of any obligation to deliver water to Mexico which a future treaty might impose. But when it came to an apportionment among the Lower Basin States, the Gila, by far the most important Lower Basin tributary, would not logically be in- cluded, since Arizona alone of the States could effectively use that river.40 Therefore, with minor exceptions, the proposals and counter- proposals over the years, culminating in the Project Act, consistently provided for division of the mainstream only, reserving the tribu- taries to each State's exclusive use. The most important negotiations among the States, which in fact formed the basis of the debates leading to passage of the Act, took place in 1927 when the Governors of the seven basin States met at Denver in an effort to work out an allocation of the Lower Basin waters acceptable to Arizona, California, and Nevada. Arizona and California made proposals,41 both of which suggested giving Nevada 300,000 acre-feet out of the mainstream of the Colorado River and reserving to each State the exclusive use of her own tributaries. Arizona proposed that all remaining mainstream water be divided equally between herself and California, which would give each State 3,600,000 acre-feet out of the first 7,500,000 acre-feet of mainstream water. California rejected the proposed equal division of the water, suggesting figures that would result in her getting about 4,600,000 out of the 7j500,000. The Governors of the four Upper Basin States, trying to bring Arizona and California together, asked each State to reduce its demands and suggested this compromise: Nevada 300,000 acre-feet, Arizona 3,000,000, and California 4,200,000.42 These alloca- tions were to come only out of the mainstream, that is, as stated by the Governors, out of "the average annual delivery of water to be pro- *°N,ot only does the Gila enter the Colorado almost at the Mexican border, but also in dry seasons it virtually evaporates before reaching the Colorado. a See 69 Cong. Rec. 9454 (1928). 42 See 70 Cong. Rec. 172 (1928). |