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2132 remains that the bill doesn't require the agencies to hold public hearings in making their determinations or to assemble a record of their actions that would assist the future litigants in courts aetermining whether the agencies had a basis in fact for their estimates. Safeguards against federal bureaucratic overreaching are usually provided because the federal agencies are ordinarily obligated to fulfill the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act. But no mention is made of that Act in the bill or its explanation and the procedures of the bill are more permissive than those of the Act. It is likely, therefore, that the bill is intended to come under one of the many exemptions to the APA (for example, the rUle-making requirements of the Act do not apply "to the extent that there is involved. . . (2) a matter relating to . . . public property"). Without these usual safeguards against arbitrary agency action, the federal agencies under the proposed bill would, in the states' view, have an unfair advantage over the non-federal party. In addition, the bill provides only that the determinations of the agency "may be reviewed" by the judiciary in the appropriate action during the three year period. Although the comments state that a trial de novo is permitted, this is nowhere spelled out in the bill itself (trial de novo is a new trial by the reviewing court in which determinations of the court or agency below are not given the usual benefits of any doubts that exist). Since the usual administra- tive safeguards are currently not present under the bill, and because of the complexity and the uncertainty of the matters to be determined, it see~s ele- mentary that trial de novo would be essential to a fair resolution of these problcmse Uevertheless, since it is not expressly stated in the bill, it is possible that it would not be granted. The bill's failure to so require is thus objectionable. IV OBJECTIVES A proper test for any legislative proposal is whether or not it would succeed in meeting its objectives. The objectives set forth for the Justice Department proposal are to coordinate federal used of water with state and private uses, to cooperate with the states in their water resources management by giving notice of federal water rights, and to facilitate judicial review of administratively determined rights of the federal government to the use of water. It is the states' position that the draft bill not only contains significant disadvantages which outweigh the advantages it purports to offer, but that the proposal would fail to meet its stated objectives for the following reasons: A. The draft bill, through establishment of an office in the Department of Interior for the maintenance of records of all rights to the use of water owned or claimed by the United States, appears to provide the first step toward federal assumption of all water rights administration. Despite the draft bill's stated objective of coordinating federal water uses with state and private uses, the bill would set up an office in the De- partment of the Interior which would maintain the records of the water inventoried and which, as previously noted, would be an unnecessary and costly duplication of the water right offices already established within the respective states. Furthernore, the establishing of such an office could initiate the eventual displace~ent of existing state water law and administration. (19)