WSPC01380 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

The 003112 1948 compact establishes the rules by which the states of the Upper Page II Basin will curtail their respective uses if and when actual shortages develop on meeting the ten-year, 75 MAF Lee Ferry obligation under the 1922 compact. It contains far fewer ambiguities than does the 1922 compact, but certain of its provisions are inconsistent with some interpretations of that earlier compact. Allocation of Colorado River water among the Lower Basin states was not accomplished by the interstate compact. Agreement between Arizona and Califonria could not be reached and the issue was litigated before the Supreme Court. The Court's 1963 decision in Arizona v. California constitutes the third institutional departure from the application of the doctrine of prior appropriation. In its decision, the Court followed the Boulder Canyon Project ~ ACt of 1928 in awarding 2.8 million acre-feet of mains tern supplies annually to Arizona, 4.4 million acre-feet annually to California, and 300 thousand acre- feet annually to Nevada. In a dramatic victory for Arizona, the Court excluded 3 to 4 MAF of virgin flow entering the Colorado River from Arizona's tributaries ~ from the apportionment, awarding consumptive use of these flows exclusively to Arizona and increasing Arizona's relative share of mainstem supplies. Any surplus mainstem waters were to be divided by the formula of 46 percent to Arizona, 50 percent to California, and 4 percent to Nevada. The Secretary of the Interior was to determine when surplus water was available and how any curtailments would be accomplished. With the ratification of two interstate compacts and the Supreme Court decision in Arizona v. California, and subject to the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944, the interstate apportionment of the Colorado River was fairly complete. It remained for the operational meaning of some of those institutional arrangements to be defined. This was accomplished in 1968 when, in the Colorado