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Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 372', '§ 946', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 5', '§ 423', '§ 9', '§ 485', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 5', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 421', '§ 421', '§ 421', '§ 8']

US Supreme Court Decisions On-Line> Volume 438 > CALIFORNIA V. UNITED STATES, 438 U. S. 645 (1978)
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1. Under the clear language of § 8 and in light of its legislative history, a State may impose any condition on "control, appropriation, use or distribution of water" in a federal reclamation project that is not inconsistent with clear congressional directives respecting the project. To the extent that petitioners would be prevented by dicta that may chanrobles.com-red
REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J.,and STEWART, BLACKMUN, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. WHITE, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which BRENNAN and MARSHALL, JJ., joined, post, p. 438 U. S. 679. chanrobles.com-red
The United States seeks to impound 2.4 million acre-feet of water from California's Stanislaus River as part of its Central Valley Project. The California State Water Resources Control Board ruled that the water could not be allocated to the Government under state law unless it agreed to and complied with various conditions dealing with the water's use. The Government then sought a declaratory judgment in the District Court for the Eastern District of California to the effect that the United States can impound whatever unappropriated water is necessary for a federal reclamation project without complying with state law. The District Court held that, as a matter of comity, the United States must apply to the State for an appropriation permit, but that the State must issue the permit without condition if there is sufficient unappropriated water. 403 F. Sup. 874 (1975). The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed, but held that § 8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902, 32 Stat. 390, as codified, 43 U.S.C. §§ 372, 383, rather than comity, requires the United States to apply for the permit. 558 F.2d 1347 (1977). We granted certiorari to review the decision of the Court of Appeals insofar as it holds that California cannot condition its allocation of water to a federal reclamation project. 434 U.S. 984 (1977). We now reverse. chanrobles.com-red
The New Melones Dam, which this litigation concerns, is part of the California Central Valley Project, the largest reclamation project yet authorized under the 1902 Act. [Footnote 6] The Dam, which will impound 2.4 million acre-feet of water of California's Stanislaus River, has the multiple purposes of flood control, irrigation, municipal use, industrial use, power, recreation, water quality control, and the protection of fish and wildlife. The waters of the Stanislaus River that will be impounded behind the New Melones Dam arise and flow solely in California. chanrobles.com-red
The United States Bureau of Reclamation, as it has with every other federal reclamation project, applied for a permit from the appropriate state agency, here the California State Water Resources Control Board, to appropriate the water that would be impounded by the Dam and later used for reclamation. [Footnote 7] After lengthy hearings, the State Board found that unappropriated water was available for the New Melones Dam during certain times of the year. Although it therefore approved the Bureau's applications, the State Board attached 25 conditions to the permit. California State Water Resources Control Board, Decision 1422 (Apr. 14, 1973). The most important conditions prohibit full impoundment until the Bureau is able to show firm commitments, or at least a specific plan, for the use of the water. [Footnote 8] The State Board chanrobles.com-red
The history of the relationship between the Federal Government and the States in the reclamation of the arid lands of the Western States is both long and involved, but through it runs the consistent thread of purposeful and continued deference to state water law by Congress. The rivers, streams, and lakes of California were acquired by the United States under the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the Republic of Mexico, 9 Stat. 922. Within a year of that treaty, the California gold rush began, and the settlers in this new land quickly realized that the riparian doctrine of water rights that had served well in the humid regions of the East would not work in the arid lands of the West. Other settlers coming into the intermountain area, the vast basin and range country which lies between the Rocky Mountains on the east and the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Ranges on the west, were forced to the same conclusion. In its place, the doctrine of prior appropriation, linked to beneficial use of the water, arose through local customs, laws, chanrobles.com-red
E. Mead, Irrigation Institutions 372 (1903). [Footnote 9] Such commentators were not without some support from language chanrobles.com-red
"In the argument on the demurrer, counsel for plaintiff endeavored to show that Congress had expressly imposed the common law on all this territory prior to its formation into States. . . . But when the States of Kansas and Colorado were admitted into the Union, they were admitted with the full powers of local sovereignty which belonged to other States, @ 44 U. S. 519; and Colorado, by its legislation, has recognized the right of appropriating the flowing waters to the purposes of irrigation."
As noted earlier, reclamation of the arid lands began almost immediately upon the arrival of pioneers to the Western States. Huge sums of private money were invested in systems to transport water vast distances for mining, agriculture, and ordinary consumption. Because a very high percentage of land in the West belonged to the Federal Government, the canals and ditches that carried this water frequently crossed chanrobles.com-red
87 U. S. 684 (1875). See Broder v. Water Co., supra at 101 U. S. 276; Jennison v. Kirk,@ 98 U. S. 453, 98 U. S. 459-461 (1879). [Footnote 11] chanrobles.com-red
Ch. 107, 19 Stat. 377 (emphasis added). This Court has had an opportunity to construe the 1877 Desert Land Act before. In California Oregon Power Co. v. Beaver Portland Cement Co., 295 U. S. 142 (1935), Mr. Justice Sutherland [Footnote 12] explained that, through this language, Congress chanrobles.com-red
Id. at 295 U. S. 163-164. See also Gutierres v. Albuquerque Land Irrig. Co., 188 U. S. 545, 188 U. S. 552-553 (1903); Ickes v. Fox, 300 U. S. 82, 300 U. S. 95 (1937); Brush v. Commissioner, 300 U. S. 352, 300 U. S. 367 (1937). chanrobles.com-red
Unfortunately, this language, which had been hastily drafted and passed, had the practical effect of reserving all of the public lands in the West from settlement. [Footnote 13] As a result, "there came a perfect storm of indignation from the people of the West, which resulted in the prompt repeal of the extraordinary [1888] provision." 29 Cong.Rec.1955 (1897) (statement of Cong. McRae). In the Act of Aug. 30, 1890, 26 Stat. 391, Congress repealed the 1888 provision except insofar as it reserved reservoir sites. Then, in the Act of Mar. 3, 1891, 26 Stat. 1101, as amended, 43 U.S.C. § 946, Congress provided for rights-of-way across the public lands to be used by "any canal or ditch company formed for the purpose of irrigation." The apparent purpose of the 1890 and 1891 Acts was to reserve reservoir sites from settlement, but to open them for use in reclamation projects. [Footnote 14] As before, Congress expressly indicated chanrobles.com-red
The final provision of the 1897 Act was proposed as a floor amendment by Representative, later Speaker, Cannon to expressly preserve States' control over reclamation within their borders. It was clearly the opinion of a majority of the Congressmen who spoke on the bill, however, that such an amendment was unnecessary except out of an excess of caution. [Footnote 16] According to Congressman Lacey, Chairman of the House Committee on Public Lands and a principal sponsor of the chanrobles.com-red
Id. at 174 U. S. 709. chanrobles.com-red
It is against this background that Congress passed the Reclamation Act of 1902. With the help of the 1891 and 1897 Acts, private and state reclamation projects had gone far toward reclaiming the arid lands, [Footnote 17] but massive projects were now needed to complete the goal and these were beyond the means of private companies and the States. In 1900, therefore, all of the major political parties endorsed federal funding of reclamation projects. While the Democratic Party's platform specified none of the attributes of a federal program other than to recommend that it be "intelligent," chanrobles.com-red
H.R.Rep. No. 794, 57th Cong., 1st Sess., 7-8 (1902). Thus, in response to the chanrobles.com-red
35 Cong.Rec. 6687 (1902) (emphasis added). [Footnote 20] chanrobles.com-red
Ibid. As Representative Sutherland, later to be a Justice of this Court, succinctly put it, "if the appropriation and use were not under the provisions of the State law, the utmost confusion would prevail." Id. at 6770. Different water rights in chanrobles.com-red
A principal motivating factor behind Congress' decision to chanrobles.com-red
Both sponsors and opponents of the Reclamation Act also expressed constitutional doubts as to Congress' power to override the States' regulation of waters within their borders. Congress was fully aware that the Supreme Court had "in chanrobles.com-red
For almost half a century, this congressionally mandated division between federal and state authority worked smoothly. No project was constructed without the approval of the Secretary of the Interior, and the United States, through this official, preserved its authority to determine how federal funds should be expended. But state laws relating to water rights were observed in accordance with the congressional directive contained in § 8 of the Act of 1902. In 1958, however, the first of two cases was decided by this Court in which private landowners or municipal corporations contended that state water law had the effect of overriding specific congressional directives to the Secretary of the Interior as to the operation of federal reclamation projects. In Ivanhoe Irrigation District v. McCracken, 357 U. S. 275, the Supreme Court of California decided that chanrobles.com-red
357 U.S. at 357 U. S. 291-292. Five years later, in City of Fresno v. California, 372 U. S. 627 (1963), this Court affirmed a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit holding that § 8 did not require the Secretary of the Interior to ignore explicit congressional provisions preferring irrigation use over domestic and municipal use. [Footnote 24] chanrobles.com-red
While we are not convinced that the above language is diametrically inconsistent with the position of petitioners, [Footnote 26] or that it squarely supports the United States, it undoubtedly goes further than was necessary to decide the cases presented to the Court. Ivanhoe and City of Fresno involved conflicts between § 8, requiring the Secretary to follow state law as to water rights, and other provisions of Reclamation Acts that placed specific limitations on how the water was to be distributed. Here the United States contends that it may ignore state law even if no explicit congressional directive conflicts with the conditions imposed by the California State Water Control Board. [Footnote 27] chanrobles.com-red
But because there is at least tension between the above-quoted dictum and what we conceive to be the correct reading of § 8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902, we disavow the dictum to the extent that it would prevent petitioners from imposing conditions on the permit granted to the United States which are not inconsistent with congressional provisions authorizing the project in question. Section 8 cannot be read to require the Secretary to comply with state law only when it becomes necessary to purchase or condemn vested water rights. That chanrobles.com-red
The United States suggests that, even if the Congress of 1902 intended the Secretary of the Interior to comply with state law, more recent legislative enactments have subjected reclamation projects "to a variety of federal policies that leave no room for state controls on the operation of a project or on chanrobles.com-red
Early in its opinion, the majority identifies the critical issues in this case as to the "meaning and scope" of § 8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902. In quest of suitable answers, the majority launches on an extensive survey of 19th- and 20th-century statutory and judicial precedents that partially delineate the relationship between federal and state law with respect to the conservation and use of the water resources of the Western States. At the end of this Odyssean journey, the conclusion seems to be that, under the relevant federal statutes containing the reclamation policy of the United States, the intention of the Congress has been to recognize local and state law as controlling both the "appropriation and distribution" chanrobles.com-red
Meanwhile, the opinion has also concluded that, because of § 8, the United States may not acquire water rights by appropriation or condemnation except in accordance with state law. If, for example, particular water rights are not subject to condemnation under state law by private interests, neither may they be taken by the United States. This issue, going to the acquisition by the United States of water rights chanrobles.com-red
Four of the five major cases bearing on the construction of § 8 have arisen out of the Central Valley Reclamation Project, a massively expensive reclamation undertaking which aimed at redistributing the water in California's Central Valley, which the State was unable to finance and which the Federal Government eventually undertook. [Footnote 2/2] The salient features of the project, which need not be repeated, have been outlined in the Court's cases. United States v. Gerlach Live Stock Co., 339 U. S. 725 (1950); Ivanhoe Irrigation District v. McCracken, 357 U. S. 275 (1958); Dugan v. Rank, 372 U. S. 609 (1963); and City of Fresno v. California, 372 U. S. 627 (1963). One of the project's principal components is the Friant Dam, which interrupted the flow of the upper San Joaquin River, the impounded waters being distributed to irrigate lands not theretofore served by San Joaquin water. To supply the needs of the lower river basin, water was imported from the Sacramento River Valley to the north. The difficulty was that Sacramento water was delivered to the San Joaquin some 60 miles below the Friant Dam. The riparian owners and others along this section of the river, the flow of which would, at the very least, be severely diminished, naturally sought their remedy. chanrobles.com-red
The next case before this Court involving the Central Valley Project was Ivanhoe, supra. That case arose out of proceedings in the state courts, required by federal statute, to confirm contracts for the use of water entered into between state irrigation districts and a state water agency, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other. The contracts contained provisions against the use of project water on tracts in excess of 160 acres, a provision specified by § 5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902 and substantially reenacted in the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926, 44 Stat. 650, as amended, 70 Stat. 524, 43 U.S.C. § 423e. [Footnote 2/3] They also contained the chanrobles.com-red
40-year payout provisions provided for in § 9 of the Reclamation Project Act of 1939, 53 Stat. 1193, as amended, 72 Stat. 542, 43 U.S.C. § 485h. The California Supreme Court refused to confirm the contracts, because it construed § 8 of the Reclamation Act of 1902 as requiring the contracts to conform to state law and because the 160-acre limitation and the payout provisions were, for separate reasons, contrary to the law of California. This judgment rested in part on the theory that the water rights acquired by the United States were, by virtue of § 8, subject to the normal trust obligations to water users that were imposed by state law, and that were inconsistent with the proposed contract provisions. [Footnote 2/4] As described by the Attorney General of California, who represented the state water districts in this Court, the California Supreme Court reasoned that the water rights needed to perform the contracts chanrobles.com-red
Accordingly, chanrobles.com-red
Like Gerlach, the Dugan and Fresno cases involved the consequences of the Friant Dam on those dependent on the first 60 miles of the San Joaquin downstream from the project. These cases arose from the judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit entered in a suit brought by water right claimants below the Friant Dam, including the city of Fresno, for an injunction to prevent the storing and diverting of water at the Dam until a satisfactory remedy for the deprivation of their rights had been achieved. State v. Rank, 293 F.2d 340 (1961). The defendants were local officials of the United States Reclamation Bureau, a number of irrigation and utility districts, and later the United States itself. The District Court overruled the claim that the suit was an unconsented suit against the United States and ordered that the injunction issue unless the Government effected a "physical solution" adequate to satisfy plaintiffs' water rights, which it held the United States was obligated to respect. The Court of Appeals dismissed the United States from the action and then inquired whether the suit against the officials and the districts was also a suit against the United States. This depended, in the first instance, on whether these officers were acting within their statutory and constitutional authority. If they were not, the suit could go forward. Plaintiffs contended, among other things, that Congress had not conferred any right to condemn water rights along this stretch of the river, and that, in any event, plaintiffs had rights under California's "county of origin" and "watershed of origin" statutes that were not subject to condemnation under state law, and hence, pursuant to § 8, were not seizable by the United States. [Footnote 2/6] chanrobles.com-red
293 F.2d 354. Although holding that the United States had ample power to seize the water rights at issue, the Court of Appeals went on to hold, nevertheless, that no taking in the legal sense had transpired; the officials were mere trespassers, were acting outside their authority, and could be enjoined. Absent condemnation of vested rights, § 8 required the project to respect those rights in operating the project. Hence, an injunction was warranted.
The case was brought to this Court, where the public officers continued to claim that they were acting legally, and were not subject to suit. Plaintiffs argued, among other things, chanrobles.com-red
The Court also granted the petition for certiorari filed by the city of Fresno and dealt separately with the city's case. 372 U. S. 627 (1963). Fresno, as a riparian, overlying landowner, had vested rights to underground waters from a source fed by the San Joaquin River. These rights were threatened by the anticipated diminishment of the San Joaquin below Friant Dam. Among other things, the city claimed that the water necessary to satisfy its rights was being diverted to areas beyond the limits permitted by the "county of origin" and "watershed of origin" statutes of the State of California; under these statutes, the city's rights were preferred, and were not chanrobles.com-red
The majority reads Ivanhoe as holding that § 5 and similar explicit statutory directives are exceptions to § 8's otherwise controlling mandate that state law must govern both the acquisition and distribution of reclamation water. This misinterprets chanrobles.com-red
Much the same is true of Arizona, where the Court heard two arguments totaling over 22 hours and considered voluminous briefs that dealt with a variety of subjects, including the important issue of the impact of § 8 on the Secretary's freedom to contract for the distribution of water. In its opinion, the Court not only dealt with both Ivanhoe and Fresno as considered holdings that § 8 did not bear on distribution rights, but also expressly disagreed with its Special Master and squarely rejected claims that the Secretary could not contract for the sale of water except in compliance with the priorities chanrobles.com-red
Furthermore, in amending the reclamation laws in 1972, Congress provided that, except as otherwise indicated in the amendments, "the provisions of the Federal reclamation laws, and Acts amendatory thereto, are continued in full force and effect." 43 U.S.C. § 421d (1970 ed., Supp. V). More specifically, § 421g stated that nothing in the amendments "shall be construed to repeal or limit the procedural and substantive requirements of sections 372 and 383 of this title." chanrobles.com-red
Section 7 of the Reclamation Act, now 43 U.S.C. § 421, authorizes the Secretary to acquire any rights or property chanrobles.com-red
Never has there been a suggestion in our cases that Congress, by adopting § 8, intended to permit a State to disentitle the Government to acquire the property necessary or appropriate chanrobles.com-red
293 F.2d 354.
The dual nature of Fresno's claim, first as a riparian owner with vested rights to percolating water and second as a municipality claiming watershed preference under state law to project-developed water, is made clear in 293 F.2d 351-352, 360-361.