Court Opinion

ID: 9428978
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:25:21.698863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:16.604030
License: Public Domain

Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Justice Stevens joins,
concurring.
This case arises from an understandably intense competition between two States over rights to a small, nonnavi-gable, interstate river. Because on the record before it this *191Court cannot make an appropriate apportionment of the water, the Court remands the case to the Special Master for further factual findings.
I emphasize that under our prior holdings these two States come to the Court on equal footing. See Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U. S. 46 (1907). Neither is entitled to any special priority over the other with respect to use of the water. Colorado cannot divert all of the water it may need or can use simply because the river’s headwaters lie within its borders, Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419, 466 (1922). Nor is New Mexico entitled to any particular priority of allocation or undiminished flow simply because of first use. See, e. g., Colorado v. Kansas, 320 U. S. 383, 393 (1943). Each state through which rivers pass has a right to the benefit of the water but it is for the Court, as a matter of discretion, to measure their relative rights and obligations and to apportion the available water equitably. As the Court’s opinion states, in the process of apportioning the water, prior dependence and inefficient uses may be considered in balancing the equities. But no state has any priority over any other state. It is on this understanding of the Court’s holding that I join the opinion and the judgment.