Arizona v. California

373 U.S. 546, 83 S. Ct. 1468, 10 L. Ed. 2d 542, 1963 U.S. LEXIS 2418
Supreme Court of the United States·Decided June 3, 1963·No. 8 ORIG·Published·Cited by 426 cases

Opinions

Mr. Justice Black

delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1952 the State of Arizona invoked the' original jurisdiction of this Court1 by filing a complaint against' the [551]*551State of California and seven of its public agencies.2 Later, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and the United States; were added as parties either voluntarily or on motion.3 The basic controversy in the case is over how much water each State has a legal right to use out of the waters of the Colorado River and its tributaries. After preliminary pleadings, we referred the case to ■ George I. Haight; Esquire, and upon his death in 1955 to Simon H. Rif kind,. Esquire, as Special Master to take evidence, find facts, state- conclusions of law, and recommend a decree, all “subject to consideration, revision, or approval by the Court.”4 The Master conducted a trial lasting from June 14, 1956, to August 28, 1958, during which 340 witnesses were heard orally or by deposition, thousands of exhibits were received, and 25,000 pages of transcript were filled. Following many motions, arguments, and briefs, the Master in a 433-page volume reported his findings, conclusions, and recomménded decree, received by the Court on January 16,1961.5 The case has been extensively briefed here and orally argued twice, the first time about 16 hours, the second, over six. As we see this case, the question of each State’s share of the waters of the Colorado and its tributaries turns on the meaning and the scope of the Boulder Canyon Project Act passed by Congress in [552]*5521928.6 That meaning and scope can be better understood when the Act is set against its background — the gravity of. the Southwest's water problems; the inability of local groups or individual States to deal with these enormous problems; the' continued failure of the States to agree on how to conserve and divide the waters; and the ultimate action by Congress at the request of the States creating a .-great system of dams and public works nationally built, controlled, and operated for the purpose of conserving and distributing the' water.

The Colorado River itself rises in the mountains of Colorado and flows generally in a southwesterly direction for about 1,300 miles through Colorado, Utah, and Arizona and along the Arizona-Nevadá and Arizona-California boundaries, after which it passes into Mexico and empties into the Mexican waters of the Gulf of California. On its way to the sea it receives tributary waters from Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona. The' river and its tributaries flow in a natural basin almost surrounded by large mountain ranges and drain 242,000 square miles, an area about 900 miles long from north to south and 300 to 500 miles wide from east to west — practically one-twelfth the area of the continental United States excluding Alaska. Much of this large basin is so arid that it is, as it always has been, largely dependent upon managed use of the.waters of the Colorado River System to make it productive and inhabitable. The Master refers to archaeological evidence .that as long as 2,000 years ago the ancient Hohokam tribe built and maintained irrigation canals near what is now Phoenix, Arizona, and that American Indians were practicing irrigation in that region at the time white men first explored it. In the second half of the nineteenth century a group [553]*553of people interested in California’s Imperial Valley conceived plans to divert water from the mainstream of the Colorado to give life and growth to the parched and barren soil of that valley. As the most feasible route was through Mexico, a Mexican corporation was formed and a canal dug partly in Mexico and partly in the United States. Difficulties which arose because the canal was subject to the sovereignty of both countries generated hopes in this country that some day there would be a canal wholly within the United States, an all-American canal.7

During the latter part of the nineteenth and the first part of the twentieth centuries, people in the Southwest continued to seek new ways to satisfy their water needs, which by that time were increasing rapidly/as new settlers moved into this fast-developing region. ,But none of the more or less primitive diversions made from the mainstream of the Colorado conserved enough water to meet the growing needs of the basin. The natural flow of the Colorado was too erratic', the river at many places in canyons too deep, and the engineering and economic hurdles too great for small farmers, larger groups, or even States to build storage dams, construct canals, and install the expensive works necessary for a dependable year-round water supply. Nor were droughts the basin’s only problem; spring floods due to melting snows and seasonal storms were a recurring menace, especially disastrous in California’s Imperial Valley where, even after the Mexican canal provided a more dependable water supply, the threat of flood remained at least as serious as before.. Another troublesome problem was the erosion of land' and the deposit of silt which fouled waters, choked irrigation works, and damaged good farmland and crops.

[554]*554It is not surprising that the pressing necessity to transform the erratic and often destructive flow of the Colorado River into a controlled and dependable water supply desperately needed in so many States began tó be talked about and recognized as far more than a purely -local problem which could be solved on a farmer-by-farmer, group-by-group, or even state-by-state basis, desirable as this kind of solution might have been.' The inadequacy of a local solution was recognized in the Report of the All-American Canal Boarc] of the United' States Department of the Interior on July 22, 1919, which detailed the widespread benefits that could be expected from construction by the United States of a large reservoir on the mainstream of the Colorado and an all-American canal to the Imperial Valley.8 Some months later, May 18, 1920, Congress passed a bill offered by Congressman Kinkaid of. Nebraska directing the Secretary of the Interior to make a study and report of diversions which might be made from the Colorado River for irrigation in the Imperial Valley.9 The Fall-Davis Report,10 submitted to Congress in compliance .with the Kinkaid Act, began by declaring, “The control of the floods and' development of the resources of the Colorado River are peculiarly national problems . . .”11 and then went on to give reasons why this was so, concluding with the statement that the job was so big that only the Federal Government could do it.12 Quite naturally, .therefore, the [555]*555Report recommended that the United States construct as a government project not only an alLAmerican canal from the Colorado River to the Imperial Valley but also a dam and reservoir at or near Boulder Canyon.13

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Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546, 83 S. Ct. 1468, 10 L. Ed. 2d 542, 1963 U.S. LEXIS 2418 (1963).

373 U.S. 546 (Arizona v. California) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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