Compacts, Decrees, and Treaties Affecting CO's Water

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i°The term 'Colorado River System' means that portion of the Colorado River and its tributaries within the United States of America." Using the Colorado River Compact as the basic document in this case, an entirely different interpretation than that made by the Supreme Court can be made of the Boulder Canyon Project Act. It should be pointed out here tha.t there are lower basin tribu- taries otlier than the Gila River, which enter the Colorado River below Lee Ferry, some above Boulder Dam and some below. The Nlaster in his decision held that his apportionment of waters applied only to the waters availabZe from Boulder Dam. Thi:", decision, in effect, would have allowed the use of those tributaries entering the Colorado River between Lee Ferry and Che upper end of La.ke Mead without charge to the user state. The Supreme Court corrected this obvious error by stating that such use woul.d be charged to the user state as a part of the apportionment from Lake Mead. The United States intervened in the action for the purpose of claiming main stream and tributary waters for use on Indian reservations, national forests and other federal lands. The Master declined to make a finding on tributary waters but followed the prevailing federal theory on main stream waters as regards to reservation of water supplies by the federal government. The principal issue at stake was the amount of water needed "to satisf?? the future as well as the present needs of the:.Indiah reservations '. In arriving at this future need the NLaster determined this bq the . number of irrigable acres within each Indian reservation. The total amount of water allocated to the United States in the decision was about 1,000,000 acre-feet annually. The Supreme Court agreed with the N:aster's conclusions::arid findings on this point. A very significant part of the decree.which is of particular interest to the upper basin states reads as follooos: "Ffnally, we note our agreement with the Master that g1.1 uses of main stream water withi.n a State are to be charged against the State's apportionment, which of course includes uses by the United States." Throughout its decision it is apparent that the Supreaie Court was preoccupied by "main stream" water. In order to justi.fy this preoccupation the Court had to interpret the Boulder C$n et1 Proj- ect Act as•.deaiing only with main stream water. The $ouldCr Canyan P=vject Act, however, was based upon the Colorado RJLvet Cb aCt. The Colorado River Compact obviously and expressly deals wih the waters of the Colorado River System as therein defined. If surh were not the case it probably would never have been executed by any of the signatory states, and certainly not by the upper bttsi.n srates. The mosr disconcerting feature of the decision is thfl -16-