WSP03024

• File Number: 8230.100.10
• Description: Colorado River Basin Colorado River Litigation - Interstate Litigation - Arizona Vs California
• State: AZ
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 2/22/1982
• Author: Elbert P Tuttle
• Title: In the Supreme Court of the US - October Term 1981 - Report - Special Master Elbert P Tuttle
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

00328~

cord of evidence consisted of approximately 7,300
pages of testimony and several hundred exhibits.
From the record now assembled the questions
presented by the parties can be answered. This Report
addresses several issues including: (1) the propriety of
intervention by the Tribes; (2) whether the boundaries
to the Reservations have been tinally determined; (3)
whether the claims of water rights for lands omitted
from the 1964 Decree are precluded by that Decree;
and (4) whether the additional acreage merits a decree
awarding additional water rights to the Indian
Reservations.
In order to put these issues in context, it is neces-
sary to focus on the earlier proceedings before the
prior Master and the Court. Moreover, the adoption of
various standards and methods in the earlier proceed.
ings should substantially guide my present decision in
this case.

(a) Diuision 01 Colorado Riuer Water Among the
States 01 the Lower Basin

1. Special Master's Report 011960

The States of the Colorado River Basin had en-
tered into an agreement known as the Colorado River
Compact. The basin was divided iDtct two parts at a
point on the' River in northern Arizona known as Lee
Ferry. The Upper Basin States and the Lower Basin
States agreed that each basin would have annually
7.500,000 acre-feet of water from the Colorado River
system, while the Lower Basin had "the right to in-
crease its beneficial consumptive use of such waters by
one-million acre-feet per annum." The States agreed
that the Mexican Treaty obligation (set by treaty in
1944 at 1,500,000 acre-feet of water per annum), would
be met by the surplus beyond the amounts specified
above and, if there was not sufficient surplus, the defi-
ciency should be borne equally by the two basins. In
any event, the Upper Basin was not to deplete the flow
of the River at Lee Ferry below a total of 76,000,000
acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years.'
From this background, the interstate allocation of
mainstream water in the Lower Basin proceeded. The
authorities controlling this question were divel'l8.
Master Rifkind concluded that "the claims of Arizona,
California and Nevada to water from Lake Mead and
from the mainstream of the Colorado River below
Hoover Dam are governed by the Boulder Canyon Pro-
ject Act, [43 U.S.C. I 617 (1976)], the California Limi-
tation Act, Act of March 4, 1929, and the several water
delivery contracts which the Secretary of the Interior
has made pursuant to the authority vested in him by

A. Prior Litigation

On December 5, 1960, after lengthy trial proceed-
ings, Master Rifkind filed his Report with the Court.
The Special Master's Report provided for the division
of the Colorado River water among the Lower Basin
States and sustained the United States' claims for re-
served water rights for several federal establishments,
including claims made on behalf of the Indian Reser-
vations in the lower Colorado River Valley. The dis-
pute included controversies over both the mainstream
and tributary water in the Colorado River system. The
mainstream controversy is the most important for pre-
I sent purposes.

7. See SPECIAL MAsTER's REPORT at 138-51; 373 U.S. at 557.58.

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