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<br />',001524 <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br /> <br />Upper Colorado River Commissioners <br />December 31, 1992 <br />Page 2 <br /> <br />been negotiated the law of equitable apportionment and evolving marketing <br />principles would have applied, in part, to the benefit of the Upper Basin <br />States" (p. 14). In support of this statement, Mr. Israel quotes an excerpt <br />from a 1945 case, Nebraska v. Wyoming, to show that priority of appropriation <br />was not "the only rule for determining the rights as between States" (p. 15). <br />It is significant to note that absent from the list of "other considerations" <br />in the Nebraska case is mention of water marketing or monetary compensation <br />for upstream States. While Mr. Israel states that "the tendency [in equitable <br />apportionment cases] has been to protect existing uses wherever possible" (p. <br />15), even he does not assert that courts in equitable apportionment cases seek <br />to protect the future uses of upstream States. <br /> <br />Mr. Israel seems to want to preserve the Compact's allocations to each Basin <br />in order to preserve the "surplus" Upper Basin water for marketing to the <br />Lower Basin, but he wants to remove obstacles to water marketing in the <br />Compact "which appears not to have envisioned such transfers" (p. 14). With- <br />out the Compact on which Mr. Israel casts aspersions, there would have <br />probably been little water development in the Upper Basin in the last 70 <br />years, and there would have been little if any water to market now. This fact <br />is supported by examining case law contemporaneous with the negotiation of the <br />Compact. In Wyoming v. Colorado (1922) 259 U.S. 419, 66 L.Ed. 999, 42 S.Ct. <br />552, the United States Supreme Court held as follows: <br /> <br />. one who has acquired a right to the water of an interstate <br />stream by prior appropriation in accordance with the laws of the <br />state where it is made is protected in such right, as against <br />subsequent appropriators, although the latter withdraw the water <br />within the limits of a different state (66 L.Ed. 999). <br /> <br />Contrary to the more liberal view expressed by the Supreme Court in 1945 in <br />the Nebraska case, if the Supreme Court were asked in 1922 to allocate the <br />water of the Colorado River, the Court would probably have protected the <br />rights of the senior appropriators in the Lower Basin against future or more <br />junior rights in the Upper Basin. Mr. Israel concedes this point later in his <br />paper when he states that "in the absence of a Compact or equitable apportion- <br />ment decree, California would have utilized excess Upper Basin waters, <br />appropriated the water under state law, and in such a setting would have <br />justifiably relied on such a supply" (p. 21). <br /> <br />Although Mr. Israel talks about the transfer of water rights in the West <br />increasing substantially "during the past two decades" (p. 16), he only <br />discusses such transfers beginning in 1982. Again, Mr. Israel wants to apply <br />water marketing, an activity that by his own definition has only been carried <br />out for the past 20 years, to water allocations preserved by the 1922 Compact. <br /> <br />