8014

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 8014
• Author: McDonald, W. J.
• Title: The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum
• USFW Year: 1997.
• USFW - Doc Type: A Deal is Not a Deal.
• Copyright Material: NO

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Ratification of the com act for a second time b the states other than Arizona
P Y
was completed in 1929.53 With the compact in effect, the Upper Division
States received protection against the potential interstate application of the
doctrine of prior appropriation in the face of rapid downstream development
in California. In turn, California, compliments of the federal reclamation
program, obtained the federal financing and construction of the All American
Canal and Hoover Dam. Arizona, from its perspective, got nothing, although
it was also to eventually become a beneficiary of the storage provided by
Hoover Dam.
The Boulder Canyon Project Act also authorized Arizona, California, and
Nevada to enter into an agreement by which Arizona would receive
2.8 million acre-feet per annum and Nevada 300,000 acre-feet per annum
out of the 7.5 million acre-feet per annum of beneficial consumptive use
allocated to the Lower Basin.54 While attempted, negotiation of this compact
was never successful, with neither California nor Arizona being satisfied with
the allocation suggested by Congress in the Boulder Canyon Project Act.
When negotiations failed, Arizona turned to the U.S. Supreme Court, where it
spent the 1930s futilely arguing a series of three lawsuits filed against
California.55 The first sought to have the Boulder Canyon Project Act
1 declared unconstitutional, while the third sought a judicial apportionment of
the lower Colorado River. The Court squarely ruled against Arizona in all
three cases. Faced with over 20 years of legislative and legal failures since
the negotiation of the Colorado River Compact, and anxious to win
Congressional support for some reclamation projects of its own, Arizona
' finally ratified the compact in-1944 ss
1

~ In fact, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Wyoming had ratified the compact for a
second time prior to the enactment of the Boulder Canyon Act, their second ratifications
having already contained a waiver of the requirement that all seven states affirm the compact.
Thus, only California's and Utah's legislatures had to act in 1929. The states' second acts of
ratification are cited in T. WITHER, suprn note 36, at 58-9.
~' Boulder Canyon Project Act, ch. 42, § 4, 45 Stat. 1058 (1928) (codified as amended at 43
U.S.C.A. § 617c (1986)).
~ Arizona v. California, 283 U.S. 423 (1931) (McReynolds, J., dissent); Arizona v.
California, 292 U.S. 341 (1934); and Arizona v. California, 298 U.S. 558 (1936).
~ The act of ratification is cited in T. WITHER, supra note 36, at 58.
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