WSP09695 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

0537 . . , existence to Executive Orders. The Special Master, appointed in the case because of its complexity, recommended that approximately 1,000,000 acre-feet of water be reserved for use on approximately 135,000 irrigable acres of land. Arizona argued that navigable waters could not be re- served by Executive Order and that the United States was without power to reserve navigable water after Arizona became a state. In accepting the Special Master's recommendation and rejecting the arguments raised by Arizona, the Supreme Court held that the Commerce Clause of the Consti- tution granted the United States the power to regulate navigable waters. Moreover, the Court recognized no distinction between Indian reservations created directly by Congress and those established pursuant to Executive Order. Citing Winters, the Court affirmed the Indians' "present perfected rights" to the waters of the Colorado River, and assigned them priority dates coincident to the respective dates the lands were set aside as reser- vations. Aside from the other issues settled by the United States Supreme Court's decree of 1964, its conclusion "that the only feasible and fair way by which reserved water for the reservations can be measJ,lred is irrigable acreage" is what made the case a landmark in the history of litigation over Indian water rights. In a somewhat unusual provision (Part IX) in its decree, the Court permitted any of the parties to apply for amendment to the decree or for further relief. A supplemental decree by the Court in 1979 (439 U. S. 419) employed the term "practicably irrigable acres" (at 422) but stated that it intended no restriction of the usage of them to irrigation or other agricultural app\ ication. Pursuant to Part I X, the provision for amendment to the decree of 1964, the United States joined the five Indian tribes that were parties to Arizona v. California in seeking additional water rights to reservation 7 ;t.o;!.