Arizona v. California

"Arizona v. California" is a set of court cases, all dealing with water distribution from the Colorado River.

When two states have a controversy between each other, the case is filed for original jurisdiction with the United States Supreme Court. This is one of the very limited circumstances where the court acts as original jurisdiction, e.g. a trial court. In all other cases the court acts as the highest level appellate court in the United States.

The cases involved were all named "Arizona v. California", and were decided in 1931, 1934, 1936, 1963, 1964, 1968, 1979, 1983, 1984, 2000 and 2006.

The original decision, ussc|283|423|1931 involved the following question: How much water is Arizona entitled to under the Colorado River Compact of 1921?

Since then, the case has been relitigated several times due to disputes over California's need for more water than Arizona would like it to have.
* In the case ussc|292|341|1934 Arizona argued that the Colorado River Compact was unconstitutional.
* Arizona wants set amount of water from Colorado River to be set by Supreme Court, and to limit the amount California is allowed.
* Question: How much water are each of the states of the Colorado River Compact entitled?
* Decree setting amounts of water for decision in 373 US 546.
* Decree adjustment
* Decree adjusting amounts of water for all parties to the case.
* Decree regarding unadjudicated Indian Tribes rights to certain Colorado River water.
* Decree Adjustment
* Adjustment of amount of water to be distributed to some of the parties
* Additional adjustments

In summary, as long as there is at least convert|7500000|acre-feet|m3|sp=us|lk=on|abbr=off of water available from the Colorado River, California gets convert|4400000|acre-feet|m3|sp=us|abbr=on, Nevada gets convert|300000|acre-feet|m3|sp=us|abbr=on and Arizona gets the difference. If there is more available, California has been entitled to 50% of the water from the Colorado River, Arizona is entitled to 46% and Nevada, 4%. If there is less, the Secretary of the Interior has to divide up the water according to various formulas (which is what the court cases were about) ensuring that each of the states get a certain amount of water, except that California has an absolute fixed maximum of 4.4 million acre-feet per year (547 U.S. 157). Some of the adjustments involved rights the U.S. Government had with respect to supplying water to Indian tribes pursuant to Executive Orders signed by the President of the United States as far back as 1907.

ee also

* Wyoming v. Colorado:List of United States Supreme Court cases: volume 283, volume 292, volume 298, volume 373, volume 376, volume 383, volume 439, volume 460, volume 466, volume 531, volume 547