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<br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />given you probably provides reason enough in the collective mind <br />of the Bureau. <br /> <br />III. HOW DID WE GET HERE? <br /> <br />The federal regulatory history of the Lower Basin seems to <br />me to fall into three stages. First, (to continue with the <br />metaphor of the ratchet) there was the "hands off" phase <br />stretching from 1929 to 1963. Then there was the "hands lightly <br />on" phase from 1964 to about 1990. We are entering the "hands <br />firmly on" phase. (Let me quickly add that this is not to <br />suggest that a heavier handed phase is, or ought, to fOllOW). <br /> <br />In the "hands off" era from 1929-1963, there was only token <br />concern for how the water allocated by contract (pursuant to <br />Section 5 of the Boulder Canyon Project Act) was distributed and <br />consumed. This was an era of benign contract administration. It <br />was a pUblic works era. Government energies were focused on <br />damming and diverting on physically regulating the water-- <br />not on regulating the user. Also, there probably was an <br />underlying assumption held by many that any regulation of the <br />water beyond the point of diversion would be the business of <br />state, not federal, government. (It must be remembered that this <br />was before the bold 1963 Arizona v. California decision.) <br /> <br />Some of the Lower Basin water delivery contracts signed in <br />the "hands off" era did reserve to the Secretary "the right to <br />prescribe and enforce rules and regUlations governing the <br />delivery and diversion of water..." (e.g. MWD 1930 contract, <br />Article 15). The contracts were either silent as to beneficial <br />use or referred to it in the most general of terms (e. g., "so <br />much water as may be necessary for the beneficial consumptive use <br />for irrigation and domestic uses"). In fairness, it must be said <br />that this generality about "beneficial use" at the federal level <br />only matched the generality of that concept at the state level. <br /> <br />The notion of reasonable beneficial use always has been <br />largely relative in nature, defined by state courts on a case by <br />case basis. ( Incidentally, this traditional imprecision is <br />beginning to change as best management practices are specified in <br />guidelines and regulations at the state level. Witness the <br />action taken by the State Water Resources Control Board in the <br />110 case, for example. ) <br /> <br />The second and more active phase of regulation (the "hands <br />lightly on" phase) started shortly after the 1963 empowerment of <br />the Secretary of the Interior by the U. S. Supreme Court in <br />Arizona v. California. In May of 1964, here in Las vegas, <br />secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall announced a ten percent <br />curtailment in deliveries of Lake Mead water because of two years <br />of inordinately low spring runoff. Lake Powell was in the <br /> <br />- 4 - <br />