Opinion ID: 106627
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the background of the boulder canyon project act.

Text: Judicial apportionment of interstate waters was established long before the Project Act as an effective means of resolving interstate water disputes. Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46. Its acceptability had never been questioned. Priority of appropriation, the basic determinant of judicial apportionment as enunciated in Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419, was the law in six of the Colorado Basin States, [4] and senior appropriations were respected in the seventh. [5] The law of appropriation, which rests on the basic principle that a water right depends on beneficial use and which gives priority of right to the appropriator first in time, had been repeatedly declared to be indispensable to the development of the arid lands of the West. [6] This backdrop of firm dedication to the principles of appropriation and of judicial apportionment is critical to an understanding of congressional purpose with respect to the Project Act. It is also critical to recognize that congressional compromise with these deeply respected principles was only partial; the problems facing Congress as a result of Wyoming v. Colorado were narrow. No Senator or Representative ever suggested that judicial apportionment was generally inappropriate; no Senator or Representative ever inveighed against the law of appropriation as such. The first problem was simply this: Interstate application of the doctrine of priority, unlimited by equitable considerations, threatened to deprive the four Upper Basin States of their fair share of the Colorado River because they were not so quick as California in development. The purpose of the Compact was simply to limit traditional doctrines to the extent necessary to avoid this extreme and harsh result, and to eliminate long and costly litigation. It was perfectly plain that the Colorado River Compact merely guaranteed to the upper States a specified quantity of water immune from priorities below, subject to stated delivery requirements; it did nothing whatever to interfere with the law of priorities or the principles of equitable apportionment among the States of the Lower Basin. [7] It was precisely because it did not that Arizona refused to approve either the Project Act or the Compact until something was done to safeguard her share of Lower Basin water. [8] Similarly, the upper States feared that in the absence of ratification by Arizona, California would be free to appropriate all the Lower Basin's share under the Compact, and Arizona, not limited by that document, would be free to appropriate, as against the upper States, water the Compact sought to apportion to the Upper Basin. [9] The remaining problem, therefore, was that California's acquisition of priorities as against Arizona and the upper States had to be further limited. A ceiling had to be put on her interstate appropriative priorities. Solution of this narrow problem likewise did not require complete abrogation of the principles of priority and interstate judicial apportionment. Still another, and profoundly significant, factor in understanding the effect of the Project Act on the law of appropriation and judicial apportionment is the pervasive hostility that many westerners had to any form of federal control of water rights. Colorado's Delph Carpenter, who was as much responsible as any man for both the Compact and the contract requirement of § 5 of the Project Act, testified in 1925 to what he termed an insidious and calculated policy of the National Government, fostered particularly by the Departments of Interior and Justice, to encroach upon state prerogatives and supersede state authority with respect to the distribution of water. He made it clear, as did Wyoming's Senator Kendrick, that he deemed this policy oppressive, destructive, and deplorable. [10] Utah's Senator King made the same objection on the floor of the Senate. 69 Cong. Rec. 10262. When it was suggested that Congress might legislate to meet the problem of California's threatened preemption of the river, a storm of doubt arose as to its constitutional power to do so. Upper Basin and Arizona spokesmenthose who were to be benefited by limiting appropriationsrepeatedly insisted that the only constitutional ways of apportioning the river were by suit in this Court or by interstate compact. [11] And Senator Bratton of New Mexico, hardly an opponent of the Project Act, objected that by merely suggesting in § 4 (a) the terms of a compact which the States were free to modify or to reject, Congress was infringing upon state sovereignty. 70 Cong. Rec. 470-471. Congress' entire approach to the problems of prior appropriation was governed by this deep-seated hostility to federal dictation of water rights. When plans for development of the Lower Basin threatened the rights of the upper States, they did not seek the simple (and in my view constitutionally unobjectionable) solution of a legislative apportionment. They employed instead the cumbersome method of interstate compact, which required authorization by Congress and by seven state legislatures prior to negotiation and ratification by the same eight bodies thereafter. When it began to appear that Arizona would not ratify the Compact, Congress still did not legislate a general apportionment. It built the statute around the provisions of the Compact, insisting on ratification by as many States as possible, even at the cost of further delaying the already overdue Project Act. It simply conditioned the use of government property and of water stored behind the dam on compliance with the Compact. Attempts to divide the Lower Basin water by interstate agreement continued through the Denver Conference called by the Upper Basin Governors in the summer of 1927nearly five years after negotiation of the Compact. Yet it was not until 1927 that an amendment was first offered to protect Arizona by a statutory limitation on California's consumption, and it was not until 1928 that the proposal was adopted into the bill. [12] Finally, when Congress ultimately resigned itself to the necessity of legislating in some way with respect to the division of Lower Basin waters, it used narrow words suitable to its narrow purpose and to its regard both for the system of judicial apportionment and appropriation and for the rights of the States. Even then Congress did not attempt to legislate an apportionment of Lower Basin water; it simply prescribed a ceiling for California. In the words of Senator Johnson, We write, then, that California shall use perpetually only a specific amount of water, naming the maximum amount which may be used. 69 Cong. Rec. 7250. Even this, Congress was unwilling to do directly. As reported from committee, the bill contained a provision directing the Secretary of the Interior to limit California's consumption in the exercise of his power of contract. [13] But this was replaced by the present provision, which reached the same result not via the Secretary's contract authority but by the awkward device of requiring California's legislature to consent to the limitation as a condition precedent to the effectiveness of the Project Act. And this was not all; to end the tale Congress added to § 4 (a) specific authorization to Arizona, California, and Nevada to enter into an agreement to complete the division of the Lower Basin waterthe same cumbersome substitute for direct congressional apportionment that had been abortively mooted for six years. This history bears recapitulation. First, the law of appropriation, basic to western water law, was greatly respected, and the solution of interstate water disputes by judicial apportionment in this Court was well established and accepted. Second, the problems created by these doctrines as applied in Wyoming v. Colorado were narrow ones, not requiring for their solution complete abrogation of well-tried principles; existing law was quite adequate to deal with all questions save those Congress expressly solved by imposing a ceiling on California. Third, Congress throughout the dispute exhibited great reluctance to interfere with the division of water by legislation, because of a deep and fundamental mistrust of federal intervention and a profound regard for state sovereignty, shared by many influential members. Finally, when Congress was forced to legislate with respect to this problem or face defeat of the entire Project Act, it chose narrow terms appropriate to the narrow problem before it, and even then acted only indirectly to require California's consent to limiting her consumption. It is inconceivable that such a Congress intended that the sweeping federal power which it declined to exercise a power even the most avid partisans of national authority might hesitate to grant to a single administrator be exercised at the unbridled discretion of an administrative officer, especially in the light of complaints registered about bureaucratic and oppressive interference of the Department which that very officer headed. [14] It is utterly incredible that a Congress unwilling because of concern for States' rights even to limit California's maximum consumption to 4,400,000 acre-feet without the consent of her legislature intended to give the Secretary of the Interior authority without California's consent to reduce her share even below that quantity in a shortage.