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00185~ Of course, a draft report by a Special Master is not a final decision. It will be up to the Supreme Court whether to accept or reject the Master's recommendations or whether to accept them in part and l'eject them in part, Still. precedent is on our side, Historically the Supreme Court has adhered very closely to the recommendations of its Special Masters. By June BO, 1960, the end of the fi~cal year, whieh is the period covered by this annual report, the various parties had filed their comments on the Ma~t"r's draft report. (t1tah chose to make none. California's comment wa~, to say the least, vigor- ous. The report, it said, "propose~ a deci~ion centered on a pro- ration formula di~a~trous t.o California.") The schedule for the concluding phases of the litigation, then, shapes up something like this: After July 1 the Mastel' was expected to act on oLjectiow; in the form of comments on his draft report and then file hi~ final report with the Supreme Court. Those st.eps probably will already have taken place by the time these words are being read. The Court then woult! cali for any exceptions to the report and require briefs and Ol'al arguments, Such arguments may be expected to take place in early 1061. A final decision by the Court in 1961 is anticipated. THE DRAFT REPORT To reproduce herein the entire 387-page draft report would be pointless and unnecessarily costly, Copies are on file with the Stream Commission and are available to interested persons. But for the benefit of those who are precluded by lack of time from reading the entire repOl't, we think it might be useful to summarize and excerpt some of the Master's preliminary comments. Then we will set forth briefly his basic finding~. Finally, we will reproduce the text of his recommended decree and digest some of the national press comment on the Master's draft report. In his introductmy statement, .Judge Rifkind de~,cribed the litigation in these words: "As ultimately submitted, the nction really presents a num- ber of different but related controversies among the parties. First. there is the mainstream controversy. involving as parties Arizona, California and Nevada. Arizona claims the right to use 2.8 million acre-feet of 7.5 million acre-feet of water in the Colo- rado River plus half of surplus. This claim is based on what Ari- zona conceives to be a mandatory" division of water made by Congress in the second paragraph of Section 4 (a) of the Boulder Canyon Project Act. Existing projects in A rizolJa consume some- what less than half of this amount of water. Arizona expects to use most of the presently uncommitted water which she claims for a new project, called the Central Arizona Project, to provide ~\'ater for irrigation in a larg_e por~ion of central Arizona.