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<br />I' ", :;J" <br />JUu..J I I <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />in financing yet another interbasin transfer, the State Water Project. This <br /> <br />Project now under construction, is designed to transport water from the <br /> <br />Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta several hundred miles to southern California. <br /> <br />"A special committee of water lawyers was appointed in 1957 to study the <br /> <br />area of origin protection statutes and report its views to the State Attorney <br /> <br />General. This committee concluded that the present statutes were deficient <br /> <br />in failing to provide quantitative limits on the water reserved for the <br /> <br />county, area, or watershed of origin. Southern California insisted upon such <br /> <br />limits, arguing that costly projects for transporting water to the South were <br /> <br /> <br />not feasible unless the amount of surplus water permanently available for <br /> <br />export was determined in advance. Residents of the North, on the other <br /> <br />hand, objected that estimates of future needs in the North might be too <br /> <br />low. <br /> <br />"The water lawyers pointed out that this so-called conflict was <br /> <br />irreconcilable only if the quantity reserved was considered final, permanent, <br /> <br />and unchangeable. They believed that recapture offered no real solution, <br /> <br />and that it would be futile to permit construction of costly projects, such <br /> <br /> <br />as the Feather River Project (State Water Project), with the possibility that <br /> <br />the project might be made worthless by later recapture of the water by the <br /> <br />area of origin, as provided by the 1931 County of Origin Statute. At the <br /> <br />same time the Committee was worried that guaranteeing a given quantity <br /> <br />of water to the politically powerful southern part of the state would not <br /> <br />necessarily guarantee southern support for new projects in the North if the <br /> <br />wa ter reserved for the North later proved inadequate. The lawyers <br /> <br />concluded that the answer lay not in recapture, but in long-range plans for <br /> <br />-19- <br />