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'0245 . . provlslons of state law. In support of its conclusions, concerning the need to observe state water law, the Suprerre Court cited fran the Senate report on the McCarran Amerdment, 87/ which subjects the United States to state-court jurisdiction for general stream adju:1ications: . "In the arid _stern states, for more than eighty years, the law has been the \1ater above and reneath the surface of the groW1d I::elongs to the public, an:l. the right to the use thereof is to I::e acquired fran the state in which it is found, which state is vested wi th the primary controls thereof.... Since it is clear that the states have the control of water within their boundaries, it is essential that each an:l. ever).' owner along a given water course, including the United States, must re amenable to the law of the state, if there is to re a proper administration of water law as it has developed aver the years." 88/ . The Solicitor rejects this philosophy I::ecause "then the federal lan:l. manager would have to manage the sarre kind of federal lands sig- nificantly differently in different states, depending on local laVl." 89/ This argunent, hc:wever, fails to recCX)'nize what the Solicitor himself- concedes in another part of the opinion; namely, that other methcx:ls are available to the United States by which it can acquire water rights for use on federal lands resides acquiring water rights in unappropriated waters pursuant to state water laws. As the Solicitor notes, "chief arrong these well recognized rrethcx:ls are purchase, donation, exchange or con::lennation." 90/ In::leed, Congress has given federal agencies the authority, an:l. federal agencies have used these methods for this purpose, as the Solicitor himself concedes. Beyond this, the Solicitor takes no cCX)'nizance of the problems that would result for federal agencies as well as state administrators and water right holders if the agencies were allowed to ignore substantive state law in acquiring non-reserved federal water rights. In dis- cussing Congress' insistence in the Reclamation law that federal agen- cies a::rnply with substantive state law in acquiring and distributing water fran Reclamation projects, the SUprerre Court cited a staterrent fran then Representative Sutherland that, "If the appropriation and use were not under the provisions of the state law the ut:rrDst confusion would prevail." The Court noted that different water rights in the same state \\Duld re governed by different laws and would frequently conflict... "The principal rrotivating factor behind Congress' decision to defer to state law was the legal confusion that \\Duld arise if fe:leral water law and state law reigned side by side in the same locality." 91/ . This is the result that would occur if the courts upheld the Solicitor's theory concerning non-reserved federal water rights. Unless federal administrators detennined that state substantive law "recognizes fe:leral appropriative rights in all pertinent respects," 92/ so-calle:l non-reserved water rights 'MJuld e:dst side by side with state appro- priative rights, both governed by different laws, leading to precisely the kind of confusion that the Suprerre Court found inconsistent with congressional intentions concerning federal-state relations in water law. -13- 90,