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<br />.. <br /> <br />that Section 4 (a) refers specifically to Article ill of the 1922 Compact and Article ill (a) apportions <br />water from the Colorado River System, which is defmed in Article II (a) as including the entire <br />mainstream and the tributaries."115 <br /> <br />The master held that the 1928 Act amounted to a Congressional apportionment of the <br />Colorado River mainstem water and that interpreting the 1922 Compact was not needed to decide <br />the case. In 1963, The Supreme Court upheld the Special Master. The Court went on to say that its <br />decision did not affect any issue of interpretation of the 1922 Compact.116 <br /> <br />One of the compelling reasons that the Special Master made in deciding to limit the case to <br />mainstem water was the fact that Congress did not include New Mexico and Utah in the Section 4 <br />(a) apportionments. It dealt with only three of the five Lower Basin States, the three states, which <br />significantly, are geographically accessible to mainstream water. 117 <br /> <br />The Special Master made several other findings that, after being upheld by the Supreme <br />Court, are important to the situation on the river today. The master ruled that consumptive use is to <br />be measured as diversions at each diversion point on the mainstem less returns to the mainstem. It <br />does not include evaporation and channel losses on water in the mainstream which occur before the <br />water is diverted.ll8 <br /> <br />The Special Master also ruled that certain provisions of the 1942 and 1944 contracts between <br />the Secretary of the Interior and Nevada and the 1944 contract between the Secretary of the Interior <br />and Arizona were invalid.119 These contracts had provisions that required that deliveries of water <br />from the mainstream to users in Arizona and Nevada be reduced by the tributary depletions in those <br />states upstream of Lake Mead. <br /> <br />The 1944 Nevada contract had the following provision: "Subject to the availability thereof <br />for use in Nevada under the provisions of the Colorado River Compact and the Boulder Canyon <br />Project Act, the United States shall, from storage in Lake Mead deliver to the State each year at a <br />point or points....so much water, including all other waters diverted for use within the State of <br />Nevada from the Colorado River system, as may be necessary to supply the State a total quantity not <br />to exceed Three Hundred Thousand (300,000) acre feet each calendar year."120 <br /> <br />115364 U.S. 940, (1960), page 173. <br /> <br />116376 U.S. 340, (1963), page 353. <br /> <br />117364 U.S. 340, (1960), page 176. <br /> <br />118364 U.S. 340, (1960), pages 186-187. <br /> <br />119364 U.S. 940, (1960), pages 237-247. <br /> <br />120364 U.S. 940, (1960), page 420 (Appendix 7). <br /> <br />Page -40- <br />