WSP10526

• File Number: 8210.110.60
• Description: Colorado River Water Users Association
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 12/6/1962
• Author: CRWUA
• Title: Proceedings of the 19th Annual Conference
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

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In studying this bill, certain questions were raised in the minds of the
members of the committee and in order to "point up" the problem areas, cer-
tain amendments to the bill were proposed. A copy of this bill (S, 2636) showing
these amendments is attached to my paper, Those of us working on this type of
legislation are fully cognizant of the fact that any bill presented to Congress
must be politically feasible and must in no way prevent the development of pro-
jects such as our own Colorado River Project. The amendments proposed to
S. 2636 are designed to accomplish two things, namely, the establishment of
water rights by grant of Congress and to provide added protection for existing
water rights under State laws and water rights recognized by State law to develop
water for beneficial use, As stated, these amendments are for the purposes of
study and their primary objective is to "point up" problem areas.

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In considering this legislation we believe that Congress should within its
constitutional authority set limits on the exercise of its own powers and grant
to the states those rights that are necessary to clarify the issues and establish
water rights under the laws of our several States.

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The Desert Land Act, recognizing and authorizing the acquisition of water
right under State law on public lands is a precedent for Congress to extend this
same authorization to withdrawn and reserved Federal lands. The reasonabl-
ness for Congress to take such action is supported by the fact that since 1934
all public lands have been withdrawn or reserved.

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Members of the FRPA's Special Committee are appearing before organi-
zations such as yours and are writing letters to water interests and water
leaders in the Western States, encouraging a united cooperative effort in the
presentation to Congress at its next session of a Bill designed to solve as much
of this problem as possible, Over a hundred such letters have been written and
the response, which we have received to date, supports the belief that an org-
anized legislative program can and will be had,

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For example, the Chairman of the Committee wrote to Secretary of the
Interior Stewart L. Udall requesting his support in solving this problem~ In
the letter to Secretary Udall his attention was called to a statement which he
had made while a member of Congress and I quote from the letter:

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"As documentation for the militant leaderships which you
furnished as a member of the Subcommittee on Irrigation and
Reclamation of the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs of
the House of Representatives (86th Congress) on July 20, 1959,
you ably and courageously testified in support of H, R. 4567, 4604,
4607, and 6140 embracing the so-called 'Federal Agencies Bill, '
as follows:

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'Mr. Chairman, * * "

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'I am very happy to sponsor such legis-
lation as is before the committee today, I regard
it as a half step of some kind, and a very whole-
some one, and I think it is long overdue that we
do something to clarify the uncertainty that has
been very troublesome to those of us in the arid
areas of the West, particularly where appropria-
tion of water and its use is a very serious problem,

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