WSP08006

• File Number: 8221.112.A
• Description: Central Arizona Project
• State: AZ
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 6/7/1963
• Title: Supplemental Report: Central Arizona Project
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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Background Chronolo~r
The 1947 Central Arizona Project report presented a comprehensive plan

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for importation of water from the Colorado River to supplement the

inadequate supplies available to the Gila River Basin in central

Arizona and western New Mexico. The report was reviewed by the appro-

priate State and Federal agencies, and subsequently approved by the

Secretary of the Interior in February 1948. Hearings on bills to

authorize the project were held in the Senate and House of Representa-

tives in 1949. Authorization bills passed the Senate in the years

1950 and 1951, but hearings were postponed by the House Committee on

Interior and Insular Affairs in 1951 until such time as Arizona's

right to the use of Lower Colorado River water was adjudicated

or settled by other means. This action in the House was in line with

comments of the state of California in its review of the 1947 report,

from which the following is quoted:

"It is only because a determination of the respective

rights of the 10Her-basin states to the waters of the

Colorado River system has not been made that California

submits any criticism of your proposed report. Whenever

it is finally determined what water belongs legally to

Arizona, it should be permitted to use that water i~ any

manner or by any method considered best by Arizona, so

long as it does not conflict with the right of California

to the use of its water from the Colorado River system."

In the summer of 1952, the state of Arizona initiated an interstate

suit in the Supreme Court of the United states against California and

"