WSP04363

• File Number: 8210.110.60
• Description: Colorado River Water Users Association
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 12/6/1951
• Author: CRWUA
• Title: Proceedings of the 8th Annual Conference
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

complaint. These motions were heard by Judge Weinberger and denied. The
Justice Department Attorney, Mr. Veeder, offered to stipulate that the
word "paramount" was used in the complaint only in the sense that it
appears in certain California cases as meaning a "prior" or "better" right.
When asked to amend by striking this language, he urged that this would re-
quire serving all defendants again, which wqluld be expensive and cause delay.

This assertion of paramount right by the United States on an intra-
state stream created an immediate reaction $mong state officials, the press,
and the legal profession. Shortly after the turn of the century, in,Kansas
vs Colorado, 206 U. s. 46, and as recently as 1945, in Nebraska vs Wyoming,
325 U. s. 589, the United States contended that it owned all the unappropri-
ated waters in the innavigable streams of the West. One trouble is, there
may be no unappropriated water in the Sa.nta' Margari ta River. Furthermore,
in those former cases the Bureau of Rec~amation was invo~ved. It is bound
by Section 8 of the Reclamation Act of ~902\ which requires that the Interior
Department conform to state water laws in the reclamation of lands. In the
Fallbrook case the Department of the Navy i~ the agency involved. Section 8
does not apply to it. Perhaps the federal attorneys thought this would be a
better opportunity for the assertion of federal right. In the recent Tide-
lands cases the doctrine of paramount authority of the United States was
asserted successfully in the United States Supreme Court. Perhaps the
Fallbrook case may be intended as a summarr taking of private water rights
instead of state tidelands. Spokesmen of t~e Department of Justice deny
such an intent. In order to protect Califdrniain any encroachment on state
rights the Attorney General of the State o~ California has intervened, and
designated Arvin B. Shaw, Jr. in charge of ~he state's interests.

Not only is the United States serving the 62 defendants named in
the complaint and the 25 John Does, but service of process is being conducted
to reach every water user on the stream system regardless of the amount of
water claimed. People being served include, in addition to riparian owners,
users of wells on lands adjacent to the stI!eam system, appropriators under
permit, owners of patented land with water !rights expressly inoluded, and
users of water from Fallbrook Public Utili~y District. People in housing
projects who own no land but merely drink4nd bathe in water provided by
the Utility District have been served, as have land owners in the Basin
who use only water brought into the Basin from another watershed. This
blanket service of summons has so aroused public feeling that it reached
to the Congress. The House sub-committee $n Irrigation and Reclamation
of the Committee on Interior and Insular A~fairs held public hearings in
Fallbrook on August 13 and 14, 1951. It w~s asserted that the number of
defendants might be as high as 14,000. Th~s could mean 14,000 different
lawsuits in one, with many more attorneys ~eeded than there are available
in the county. '

Two possibilities appeared at the Congressional hearing fora
physical solution without the lawsuit. The Navy could be required to
proceed under the agreement for the De LuziDam,which, if constructed,
would provide the Navy with the amount of water they formerly deemed
necessary, and also provide water for the fallbrook Utility District. Or
the United States could reasonably get an ~dditional supply of water by a
temporary pipe line to the Metropolitan Water District's aqueduct from the
Colorado River. If a lawsuit appears to be necessary the United States might

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