Arizona v. California

Arizona v. California

Opinion

 [*550]  [***550]  [**1473]    MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

In 1952 the State of Arizona invoked the original jurisdiction of this Court ¹ by filing a complaint against the  [*551]  State of California and seven of its public agencies. ² [****12]  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.  [****10]  After preliminary pleadings, we referred the case to George I. Haight, Esquire, and upon his death in 1955 to Simon H. Rifkind, 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 recommended 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]  1928. 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 [****11]  of local groups or individual States to deal with these enormous  [***551]  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-Nevada 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  [**1474]  drain 242,000 square miles, an area about 900 miles long from north to south and 300 to 500 [****13]  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]  of 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 [****14]  canal. ⁷

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