Opinion ID: 104812
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: navigation or reclamation project?

Text: The Solicitor General contends that this overall project, and each part of it, has been authorized by Congress, under the commerce power, as a measure for control of navigation. Claimants on the other hand urge that although improvement of navigation was one objective of the Central Valley undertaking as a whole, nevertheless construction of the Friant Dam and the consequent taking of San Joaquin water rights had no purpose or effect except for irrigation and reclamation. This, it is claimed, was not only the actual, but the avowed purpose of Congress. On these conflicting assumptions the parties predicate contrary conclusions as to the right to compensation. In the Rivers and Harbors Act of August 26, 1937, § 2, 50 Stat. 844, 850, and again in the Rivers and Harbors Act of October 17, 1940, 54 Stat. 1198, 1199-1200, Congress said that the entire Central Valley project . . . is . . . declared to be for the purposes of improving navigation, regulating the flow of the San Joaquin River and the Sacramento River, controlling floods, providing for storage and for the delivery of the stored waters thereof . . . . The 1937 Act also provided that the said dam and reservoirs shall be used, first, for river regulation, improvement of navigation, and flood control . . . . But it also is true, as pointed out by claimants, that in these Acts Congress expressly reauthorized [2] a project already initiated by President Roosevelt, who, on September 10, 1935, made allotment of funds for construction of Friant Dam and canals under the Federal Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, 49 Stat. 115, § 4, and provided that they shall be reimbursable in accordance with the reclamation laws. [3] A finding of feasibility, as required by law, [4] was made by the Secretary of the Interior on November 26, 1935, making no reference to navigation, and his recommendation of the Central Valley development as a Federal reclamation project was approved by the President on December 2, 1935. When it reauthorized the Central Valley undertaking, Congress in the same Act provided that the provisions of the reclamation law, [5] as amended, shall govern the repayment of expenditures and the construction, operation, and maintenance of the dams, canals, power plants, pumping plants, transmission lines, and incidental works deemed necessary to said entire project, and the Secretary of the Interior may enter into repayment contracts, and other necessary contracts, with State agencies, authorities, associations, persons, and corporations, either public or private, including all agencies with which contracts are authorized under the reclamation law, and may acquire by proceedings in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, water rights, and other property necessary for said purposes: . . . . The Central Valley basin development envisions, in one sense, an integrated undertaking, but also an aggregate of many subsidiary projects, each of which is of first magnitude. It consists of thirty-eight major dams and reservoirs bordering the valley floor and scores of smaller ones in headwaters. It contemplates twenty-eight hydropower generating stations. It includes hundreds of miles of main canals, thousands of miles of laterals and drains, electric transmission and feeder lines and substations, and a vast network of structures for the control and use of water on two million acres of land already irrigated, three million acres of land to be newly irrigated, 360,000 acres in the delta needing protection from intrusions of salt water, and for municipal and miscellaneous purposes including cities, towns, duck clubs and game refuges. These projects are not only widely separated geographically, many of them physically independent in operation, but they are authorized in separate acts from year to year and are to be constructed at different times over a considerable span of years. A formula has been approved by the President by which multiple purpose dams are the responsibility of the Bureau of Reclamation, and dams and other works only for flood control are exclusively the responsibility of the Army Engineers. [6] The entire Friant and San Joaquin projects at all times have been administered by the Bureau of Reclamation. We cannot disagree with claimants' contention that in undertaking these Friant projects and implementing the work as carried forward by the Reclamation Bureau, Congress proceeded on the basis of full recognition of water rights having valid existence under state law. By its command that the provisions of the reclamation law should govern the construction, operation, and maintenance of the several construction projects, Congress directed the Secretary of the Interior to proceed in conformity with state laws, giving full recognition to every right vested under those laws. [7] Cf. Nebraska v. Wyoming, 295 U. S. 40, 43; Power Co. v. Cement Co., 295 U. S. 142, 164; Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589, 614; Mason Co. v. Tax Comm'n, 302 U. S. 186. In this respect, Congress' action parallels that in Ford & Son v. Little Falls Fibre Co., 280 U. S. 369. The original plan called for purchase of water rights and included an estimate of their cost. [8] We are advised by the Government that at least throughout administration of California reclamation projects it has been the consistent practice of the Bureau of Reclamation to respect such property rights. Such has specifically been the Bureau's practice in connection with the Friant project, and this has been reported to Congress, [9] which has responded some nine times in the past twelve years to requests for appropriations to meet such expenses. We think this amounts, not to authorizations and declarations creating causes of action against the United States, but to awareness and approval of administrative construction. We think it clear that throughout the conception, enactment and subsequent administration of the plan, Congress has recognized the property status of water rights vested under California law. It is not to be doubted that the totality of a plan so comprehensive has some legitimate relation to control of inland navigation or that particular components may be described without pretense as navigation and flood control projects. This made it appropriate that Congress should justify making this undertaking a national burden by general reference to its power over commerce and navigation. The Government contends that the overall declaration of purpose is applicable to Friant Dam and related irrigation facilities as an integral part of what Congress quite properly treated as a unit. Adverting to United States v. Willow River Co., 324 U. S. 499; United States v. Commodore Park, 324 U. S. 386; United States v. Appalachian Power Co., 311 U. S. 377; United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., 229 U. S. 53, the Government relies on the rule that it does not have to compensate for destruction of riparian interests over which at the point of conflict it has a superior navigation easement the exercise of which occasions the damage. And irrespective of divisibility of the entire Central Valley undertaking, the Government contends that Friant Dam involves a measure of flood control, an end which is sensibly related to control of navigation. Oklahoma v. Atkinson Co., 313 U. S. 508. Claimants, on the other hand, urge that at least the Friant Dam project was wholly unrelated to navigation ends and could not be controlled by the general Congressional declaration of purpose. They point out that, although definitions of navigation have been expanded, United States v. Appalachian Power Co., supra , in every instance in which this Court has denied compensation for deprivation of riparian rights it has specifically noted that the federal undertaking bore some positive relation to control of navigation. United States v. Willow River Co., supra, 510; United States v. Commodore Park, supra, 391; United States v. Appalachian Power Co., supra, 423; United States v. Chandler-Dunbar Co., supra, 62; and cases cited. And, referring to International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 399; United States v. River Rouge Co., 269 U. S. 411, and cases cited, they observe that this Court has never permitted the Government to pervert its navigation servitude into a right to destroy riparian interests without reimbursement where no navigation purpose existed. Since we do not agree that Congress intended to invoke its navigation servitude as to each and every one of this group of coordinated projects, we do not reach the constitutional or other issues thus posed. Accordingly, we need not decide whether a general declaration of purpose is controlling where interference with navigation is neither the means, South Carolina v. Georgia, 93 U. S. 4, nor the consequence, United States v. Commodore Park, supra , of its advancement elsewhere. Similarly, we need not ponder whether, by virtue of a highly fictional navigation purpose, the Government could destroy the flow of a navigable stream and carry away its waters for sale to private interests without compensation to those deprived of them. We have never held that or anything like it, and we need not here pass on any question of constitutional power; for we do not find that Congress has attempted to take or authorized the taking, without compensation, of any rights valid under state law. On the contrary, Congress' general direction of purpose we think was intended to help meet any objection to its constitutional power to undertake this big bundle of big projects. The custom of invoking the navigation power in authorizing improvements appears to have had its origin when the power of the Central Government to make internal improvements was contested and in doubt. It was not until 1936 that this Court in United States v. Butler, 297 U. S. 1, declared for the first time, and without dissent on this point, that, in conferring power upon Congress to tax to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States, the Constitution delegates a power separate and distinct from those later enumerated, and one not restricted by them, and that Congress has a substantive power to tax and appropriate for the general welfare, limited only by the requirement that it shall be exercised for the common benefit as distinguished from some mere local purpose. If any doubt of this power remained, it was laid to rest the following year in Helvering v. Davis, 301 U. S. 619, 640. Thus the power of Congress to promote the general welfare through large-scale projects for reclamation, irrigation, or other internal improvement, is now as clear and ample as its power to accomplish the same results indirectly through resort to strained interpretation of the power over navigation. [10] But in view of this background we think that reference to the navigation power was in justification of federal action on the whole, not for effect on private rights at every location along each component project. Even if we assume, with the Government, that Friant Dam in fact bears some relation to control of navigation, we think nevertheless that Congress realistically elected to treat it as a reclamation project. It was so conceived and authorized by the President and it was so represented to Congress. Whether Congress could have chosen to take claimants' rights by the exercise of its dominant navigation servitude is immaterial. By directing the Secretary to proceed under the Reclamation Act of 1902, Congress elected not to in any way interfere with the laws of any State . . . relating to the control, appropriation, use, or distribution of water used in irrigation, or any vested right acquired thereunder. 32 Stat. 388, 390. We cannot twist these words into an election on the part of Congress under its navigation power to take such water rights without compensation. In the language of Mr. Justice Holmes, writing for the Court in International Paper Co. v. United States, 282 U. S. 399, 407, Congress proceeded on the footing of a full recognition of [riparians'] rights and of the Government's duty to pay for the taking that [it] purported to accomplish. We conclude that, whether required to do so or not, Congress elected to recognize any state-created rights and to take them under its power of eminent domain. [11] We are guided to this conclusion by the interpretation placed on Congress' Acts by the Reclamation Bureau, which, in administering the project, has at all times pursued a course impossible to reconcile with present contentions of the Government. From the beginning, it has acted on the assumption that its Friant undertaking was a reclamation project. Even a casual inspection of its committee hearings and reports leaves no doubt that Congress was familiar with and approved this interpretation. Although the Solicitor General contends that, because of the navigation purpose remotely involved, deprivation of water rights along the San Joaquin is not compensable, we have observed that the plan as originally adopted and as carried out by the Bureau included replacement at great expense of all water formerly used for crops and controlled grass lands and purchase of that used on marginal pasture lands. [12] It has consistently advised the Congress that it was purchasing San Joaquin water rights and appropriations have been made accordingly. [13] Moreover, Congress [14] and the water users [15] have been advised that, in prosecution of the work, existing water rights would be respected. This administrative practice has been extended even to the lands in question. Pursuant to its plan, the Bureau offered to purchase the rights of claimants in Nos. 7, 8 and 9, but the parties could not agree on the price. In addition, it entered into a written contract with Miller & Lux, Inc., purchasing for $2,450,000 riparian rights which included some identical with those the Government now denies to exist. In fact it includes the very rights now asserted by claimants Gerlach, Erreca and Potter, who obtained title to their riparian properties from Miller & Lux. Because of certain reservations in their grants, it was possible that Miller & Lux retained the rights riparian to these properties. The Government therefore agreed with Miller & Lux that the sum of $511,350 should be deposited with an escrow agent. If final judgments obligate the United States to make compensation to Miller & Lux grantees for such riparian grass lands, the United States shall be reimbursed from the escrow fund in an amount not exceeding $9 per acre. However, if final judgments dismiss the claims, the escrowed funds go to Miller & Lux. The substance of this strange transaction is that the Government, which now asks us to hold that there are no such riparian rights, has already bought and paid for them at the price which the Court of Claims has allowed. The results of the Government's bargain are that, if we hold there are no rights, Miller & Lux will be paid for them; and, if we hold there are such rights, they will be paid from what otherwise goes to Miller & Lux. As to these three cases, the Government is defending against the claims, not as the real party in interest, but because it undertook to do so on behalf of Miller & Lux. Of course, this Court is not bound by administrative mistakes. If the Government had contracted to pay for rights which are nonexistent, it would not preclude us from upholding later and better advised contentions. But when a project has been regarded by the highest Executive authorities as a reclamation project, and has been carried as such from its initiation to final payment for these rights, and Congress, knowing its history, has given the approvals that it has, we think there is no ground for asking us to hold that the provisions of the Reclamation Act do not apply. We hold that they do apply and we therefore turn, as that Act bids us, to the laws of the State to determine the rights and liabilities of landowner and appropriator.