WSP11122

• File Number: 8271.300
• Description: Colorado River Basin Salinity Control Program - General Information and Publications-Reports
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 1/1/3000
• Title: OPINION - Colorado River Salinity Problem - Submitted to His Excellency - Honorable Antonio Carillo Flores - Ambassador of Mexico
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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It seems now to be agreed that there exist some rules in
international law governing the uses of international rivers
other than the doetrine of absolute sovereignty." Text-
writers thus indicate that it is the duty of a state to pre-
vent its territory from being used to the injury of another
state. In other words, the doctrine" sic utere tuo" seems
clearly to apply to relations between states."'

At the outset it is to be noted that the acts of the United
States here in question involve the discharge of water of
high salinity into the Gila River, a tributary of the Colo-
rado River, a few miles above the confluence of the Gila

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04 See Opinion of Attorney General Hurmon indicating that II tho rules,
principles, and precedents of international law impose no liability or obliga-
tion uI)on the United States" for injuries caused by the diversion of witters
of the Rio Grande. 21 Ops. Att'y Gen. 274, 283 (1895).

01:) The following passages arc illustrative:

1. II From the supremacy ana exclusiveness of the territorial jurisdiction,
it follows that it is the duty of a state, within the bounds of legal responsi-
bility, to prevent its territory and territorial waters from being used to the
injury of another state." II Moore, International Law Digest (1906) 446.

2. "Apart from lIavigation on rivers, the question of the utilisation of the
flow of rivers is of importance. With regarc1 to national rivers, the question
cannot indeed be raised, since the local State is absolutely unhindered in tho
utilisation of the ilow. But the flow of not-national, boundary, and interna-
tional rivers is not within the arbitrary power of one of the riparian States,
for it is a rulo of Intcmutional Law that no State is allowed to alter the
unturDJ conditions of its own territory to the disadvantage of tho natural
conditions of tho territol'Y of a neighbouring State. For this roason a State
is not only forbidden to stop or divert the flow ()f a river wldch rUllS from
its OWll to a lleighboring Stato, hut likewise to make such uso of the water
of the river us either causes danger to the neighbouring State or prevents it
from making proper use of the flow of tho river on its part." I Lauterpacht,
Oppenheim's International Law (8th ed. 1955) 474-75. And see id. at 290-91,
345.47.

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3. "Tho practice of States, as evidenced in the controversies which !lave
arisen about this mattcr, seems now to admit that each State concerned has
a. right to havo a river system considered ns a whole, and to have its own
interests weighed in tho balance against those of other States; aud that no
ouo State may claim to use the waters in such n wny as to cause mnterial
injury to the interests of another, or to oppose their use by another State
unless this causes material injury to itself." Brierly, Law of Nations (5th
ed. 1955) 205.

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