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2130 to the use of water owned or claimed by the United States." The states oppose the establishment of such an office as it would be an unnecessary and costly duplication of the water right offices already established within the respective states. It would, at best, house an incomplete listing of federal claimed rights which are meaningless, unless considered in conjunction with other water rights already on record in state offices. III ADJUDICATION A. The draft bill does not provide citizens with rights based on state law with sufficient notice or opportunity to obtain judicial reviewa .Section 5 of the draft bill authorized suit against the United States con- cerning the inventoried rights in federal court within three years of publica- tion in the Federal Register. However, with regard to its rights evidenced by a state permit or previously adjudicated, the United States is not amenable to suit. State officials to whom inventories are submitted are authorized to sue as are affected private citizens. An action by a private citizen may be brought if the individual: ". . . has a right to use water, valid under state law, from the same source as the source for the right of the United States to be reviewed if (1) the point of diversion or the place of use for the plaintiff's right is situated wholly or in part in the state to which the inventory listing the challenged right of the United States has been submitted and (2) the priority date for the plaintiff's right is junior to the priority date to the challenged right or the plaintiff's right will be otherwise im- paired by the challenged right." There are many potential aggrieved parties who do not have adequate opportunity to protect their interests from federal interference under these provisions of the draft bill. First of all, it is doubtful whether suit could be brought by a state official or private person where the diversion by the government is from a tributary of a water source in the official's state which tributary meets the source upstream but not in the same state. For example, a Wisconsin resident with a right to take water from the Mississippi River could not bring an action against the federal government to dispute the government's claimed rights to divert from the Minnesota River, a tributary of the Mississippi existing wholly within Minnesota. The attempt to authorize suit source-by-source rather than by water- shed leaves many potentially affected persons in this same situation. It is also not clear that suit can be maintained to litigate any claimed rights of the government that are merely claimed and for which the United States has no present intention to take and use the water. A long-standing principle of the federal courts prohibits deciding a controversy before it becomes IIripen for adjudication, i.e., before all the facts are known and all the contingencies that may work to preclude any real controversy have been eliminated. Because the courts decide an issue once and for all time, and because of the possibility the federal government may never exercise its claimed rights in such a way as to interfere with anyone's vested rights, courts may decline to hear such cases at the outset. That a real controversy does not develop until after the three year (15)