Statement of Stanley Mosk, Attorney General of California, on S. 1658 and Pacific Southwest Water Plan Before the United States Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee

Document: Statement of Stanley Mosk, Attorney General of California, on S. 1658 and Pacific Southwest Water Plan Before the United States Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, Subcommittee on Irrigation and Reclamation, April 1964, page 2authorizes a project of comparable magnitude to the Central Arizona Project. Some modifications, the nature of which I shall indicate, would be appropriate in a bill to establish the Pacific Southwest Water Plan. When this statement was prepared, S. 1658 relating to a separately authorized Central Arizona Project was the only legislation before Congress, and the amendment is therefore in form appropriate to that bill. A copy of the amendment is appended to this statement, identified as Appendix A. I can state the purpose of the proposed amendment in one sentence. The purpose is to insure that existing projects in Arizona, in California, and in Nevada, which use water from the Colorado River, shall be protected in the event of water shortage against the demands of the future Central Arizona Project. The amendment stops short of fully achieving that purpose in one respect. It limits the protection provided to California's existing projects to a total of 4.4 million acre-feet of water per year, although California projects now use 5.1 million acre-feet per year. The reason for limiting California's priorities for its existing projects to 4.4 million acre-feet per year is the limitation in the Boulder Canyon Project Act and the California Limitation Act, as construed and applied in the decree of the Supreme Court in Arizona v. California. The Court's decree similarly limits Arizona to 2.8 million acre-feet per year, but Arizona's total use will not approach that quantity even when the 1.2 million acre-foot requirement of the future Central Arizona Project is added to the full requirements of Arizona's existing projects. Nevada's existing projects fall short of using Nevada's 300,000 acre-feet by an even wider relative margin. In other words, both Arizona and Nevada can look forward to substantial expansion of main stream use. Only California's existing projects face a cut. 2.Epson Perfection 4870 Photo, 400 dpi, 8 bit, 1,102,085 byte