WSP09490 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

0027Q7 22 derness area, to the extent that such rights would limit the use or development of water within Colorado by present and future hold- ers of vested water rights in the North Platte River and its tribu- taries to the full extent allowed under interstate compact or appli- cable U.S. Supreme Court equitable decree. The paragraph also provides that any such U.S. rights are to be exercised so as not to prevent the use or development of Colorado's full entitlement to mterstate waters of the North Platte and its Colorado tributaries allowed under interstate compact or U.S. Supreme Court equitable decrees. This means that while existing water rights associated with wilderness or other Federal reservations may still be recog- nized in the North Platte and its tributaries, such rights associated with this specific wilderness area may not be asserted or exercised in a way that would prevent Colorado from using its full entitle- ment under Federal law to the waters of the North Platte system. The effect of this is to make clear that the bill is not intended to legislatively modifY the apportionment decree of the United States Supreme Court in Nebraska v. Wyoming, 325 U.S. 589 (1945), modified, 345 U.S. 981 (1953). Like paragraph 8(b)(1), para~aph 8(g)(2) of course can have no effect on the original jurisdictIon of the Supreme Court of the United States under the Constitution, but its enactment will withdraw any and all statutory jurisdiction (including any available under the McCarran Amendment, 43 U.S.C. 666) to consider the specific type of claim to which it ap- plies. ILLUSTRATIVE SITUATIONS The following hypothetical situations illustrate how section 8 would affect some decisions and land-management actions relating to existing or proposed water resource facilities. (For convenience, the term "ditch" is used in most of these examples, although ditches are only one of the types of water resource facilities covered by section 8; and the term "area" is used to refer to any area de- scribed in sections 2, 5, 6, or 9 of the bill): 1. An existing ditch in an area has historically been used for one or more beneficial uses (e.g., irrigation, municipal, or domestic use) in accordance with a water right adjudicated prior to the enact- ment of the bill for use in connection with that ditch. The ditch's owner seeks to change the point of diversion to a new ditch to be constructed within an area. This would not be permissible, because section 8(c) would prohibit the construction of the new ditch, whether or not it was to be used in the exercise of a water rights adjudicated prior to enactment. Also, section 8(dX3) would allow exercise in an area only of vested water rights adjudicated prior to enactment for use in connection with the same facilities through which the water will be used after enactment. 2. There are two existing ditches within the same area. One ("ditch A") has been used in connection with a vested water right adjudicated prior to enactment for use in connection with that ditch. The owner of ditch A seeks to change the point of diversion to the other ditch ("ditch B"). This would not be permissible, re- gardless of whether ditch B is upstream or downstream of ditch A, because the water right associated with ditch A had not been adju- dicated before enactment for use in connection with ditch B.