WSPC00493

• File Number: 8230.100.10
• Description: Colorado River - Interstate Litigation - Arizona Vs California
• State: AZ
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Water Division: 5
• Date: 6/3/1963
• Title: AZ Vs CA - Determination of Rights of States of the Lower Colorado River Basin to Waters of the Main Stream of the Colorado River - Opinion of the Supreme Court of the US - RE AZ Vs CA
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

002180

6

ARIZONA v. CALIFORNIA.

most of the Western States." Under that law the one
who first appropriates water and puts it to beneficial use
thereby acquires a vested right to continue to divert and
use that quantity of water against all claimants junior to
him in point of time.15 "First in time, first in right" is
the short-hand expression of this legal principle. In 1922,
only four months after the Fall-Davis Report, this Court
in Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419, held that the
doctrine of prior appropriation could be given interstate
effect.16 This decision intensified fears of Upper Basin
States that they would not get their fair share of Colo-
rado River water.17 In view of California's phenomenal
growth, the Upper Basin States had particular reason to
fear that California, by appropriating and using Colorado
River water before the upper States, would, under the
interstate application of the prior appropriation doctrine,

"This law prevails exclusively in all the basin States except Cali-
fornia. See Weil, Water Rights in the Western States ~ 66 (1911);
Hutchins, Selected Problems in the Law of Water Rights in the West
30-31 (1942) (U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Misc. Pub. No. 418). Even
in California it is important. See 51 CaI. Jur. 2d Waters ~~ 257-264
(1959).
15 Hinderlider v. La Plata River & Cherry Creek Ditch Co., 304
U. S, 92, 98 (1938); Arizona v. California, 283 U, S. 423, 459 (1931).
16 The doctrine continues to be applied interstate. E. g" Nebraska
v. Wyoming, 325 U. S. 589, 617-618 (1945).
17 "Delph E. Carpenter, Colorado River Commissioner for the State
of Colorado, summarized the situation produced by that decision as
follows:
"'The upper state has but one alternative, that of using every
means to retard development in the lower state until the uses within
the upper state have reached their maximum. The states may avoid
this unfortunate situation by determining their respective rights by
interstate compact before further development in either state, thus
permitting freedom of development in the lower state without injury
to future growth in the upper.'
"The final negotiation of the compact took place in the atmos-
phere produced by that decision." H. R. Doc. No. 717, 80th Cong"
2d Sess, 22 (1948).