WSP10867

• File Number: 8278.400
• Description: Title I - Mexican Treaty
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 3/1/1962
• Author: IBWC
• Title: Mexican Water Treaty -Appendix E -Water Supply
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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the 16,000,000 acre-feet allocated by the compact and after qeducting
from the surplus the Mexican apportionment, This compact was ex-
p"fE,ssly approved by the Congress in the Boulder Canyon Project Act,
approved December 21, 1928. Presumably then, the Mexican allo-
cation of 1,500,000 acre-feet per year will be supplied from the
amount of approximately 2,000,000 acre-feet which is estimated to
be the surplus after the compact allocat~ons, totaling 16,000,000
acre-feet, have been supplied. If, however, the surplus should
be insufficient for this purpose, any deficiency must be supplied
equa lly by the upper and lower basins. One of the conditions of
the Boulder Canyon Project Act was that California should agree to
limit her uses to 4,400,000 acre-feet a year plus not more than
half of the unallocated surplus, which, under the terms of the com-
pact, cannot be allocated until after October 1, 1963.
"If, therefore, there should be any infirmity in the California
contracts, it existed at the time the contracts were made and solely
by reason of the fact that the contracts encroach upon the surplus
to the extent of 962,000 acre-feet a year. Bearing in mind the fact
that the contracts are made subject to the Colorado River Compact
and the Boulder Canyon Project Act, and subject to the availability
of water thereunder for use in California, the committee does not
believe that there is any threatened impairment of the contracts in
the legal sense, nor that California has any just cause for complaint.
Furthermore, the committee believes, on the basis of the consensus of
engineering testimony, that any possible impairment of these contracts
in the physical sense is quite remote in point of time and depends
upon a number of extremely hypothetical factors and conditions which
may never assume any real importance and which have little or no
weight against the manifold advantages of the treaty."

'['he-Minority-View s-were-pres ented-a s-Part-2-0r-the-reporr:-Th e-Minority-sa1d-a l

pages 1 and 2:

"I. ALLOTMENT OF COLORADO RIVER WATER

"The treaty is said in the majority report to allot to Mexico a
minimum of 1,500,000 acre-feet of water per annum. Such allot-
ment is guaranteed and will constitute a first right on the river.
It is to be delivered according to a prescribed schedule. Water
reaching Mexico outside the schedule, even if used by Mexico,
will not be credited on the treaty obligation of the United States.
"The allotted amount is double the amount that Mexico could
or did use from the natural, unregulated flow of the Colorado River
prior to the construction of Boulder Dam. The peak annual use of

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