596
Opinion of the Court
B
The Laramie River originates in Colorado and meets the North Platte in Wyoming in the pivotal reach. In its petition, Nebraska challenged two new developments on the Laramie near the North Platte confluence. The first, Grayrocks Project, was completed in 1980. Operated by amicus Basin, it consists of Grayrocks Reservoir and an electric power generating plant. The second, Corn Creek Project, is a proposed irrigation system for Wyoming farmland.
Wyoming and Nebraska both moved for summary judgment, taking diametrically opposed positions with respect to their rights to Laramie waters. Nebraska claimed that the equitable apportionment of the water in the pivotal reach includes Laramie flows that historically have reached the North Platte. Wyoming contended that the waters of the Laramie are completely apportioned between Colorado and Wyoming by virtue of this Court's 1922 Laramie River decree, Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S. 419, 496, modified, 260 U. S. 1, vacated and new decree entered, 353 U. S. 953 (1957), which the North Platte decree expressly left undisturbed.
Paragraph XII(d) of the North Platte decree does state that the decree "shall not affect . . . [t]he apportionment heretofore made by this Court between the States of Wyoming and Colorado of the waters of the Laramie River." 325 U. S., at 671; see also id., at 592, n. 1 (Laramie decree "in no way affected" by North Platte decree). But we think the Master correctly concluded that Wyoming was not granted the right entirely to dewater the Laramie. The 1922 Laramie decree to which Paragraph XII(d) refers did not apportion all the waters of the Laramie; it dealt only with flows down to and including the Wheatland Project, a facility upstream of Grayrocks and Corn Creek. See Wyoming v. Colorado, 259 U. S., at 488.
There is a statement arguably to the contrary in a subsequent decision interpreting the 1922 decree. See Wyoming v. Colorado, 298 U. S. 573, 578 (1936) (decree establishes
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