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<br />o(n 1'22 <br /> <br />" <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />. <br /> <br />cation, but in many instances are in forms of court decrees <br />in other suits. <br />Some animosity has been stirred up against our District <br />by opponents' representations to the contrary in this regard. <br />The Toelle speeches and letters have spread this detrimental <br />misrepresentation. Such cannot help, and can only hurt our <br />water interests. <br />H. WhY Are We in Federal Court in the Contest Over <br />Rights frgm the Colorado River? <br />The title to all of the works and water rights of our <br />project is in the United States--quite naturally so, by our <br />construction contract and since the U. S. furnished all the <br />$150,000,000 for the construction. What the District water <br />users have is the right to a water supply from that project, <br />but the legal property title is in the United States. There <br />are, in this owner and water-user relationship, similarities <br />to that of right purchasers to canal owners of early day water <br />projects in northeastern Colorado--Larimer and Weld, Greeley <br />and Loveland, Evans No.2, Riverside Reservoir, for example. <br />Important questions to be determined in that matter are <br />those arising out of the 1937 East Slope-West Slope Agreement <br />in"Benate Document 80". These involved problems, not of prior- <br />ities to be decreed by courts, but of agreed manner of operation <br />of water to be diverted, that in the Colorado River watershed, <br />and that by transmountain diversion through our Granby Reser- <br />voir and the tunnel from Grand Lake to the East Slope. <br />These matters can be adjudged in one proceeding in feder- <br />al court. <br />Beside that, the United States government cannot be com- <br />pelled to submit its property rights to be adjudged in state <br />courts. The Colorado Supreme Court so held in dismissing the <br /> <br />-14- <br />