10
Opinion of the Court
water from those canals under the Decree . . . ." App. to Third Interim Report E-4. Wyoming's First Amended Cross-Claim alleges that the United States "has circumvented and violated the equitable apportionment, and continues to do so, by operating the federal reservoirs to deliver natural flow water for diversion by Nebraska irrigation canals at and above Tri-State Dam in excess of the beneficial use requirements of the lands entitled to water from those canals under the Decree . . . ." Id., at E-8. The Master recommended that we deny leave to inject these claims into the litigation, concluding that Wyoming's object is to transform the 1945 apportionment from a proportionate sharing of the natural flows in the pivotal reach to a scheme based on the beneficial use requirements of the pivotal reach irrigators. Third Interim Report 55-64. Wyoming excepts to the recommendation, claiming that its amendments do no more than elaborate on the suggestion made in the counter-claim that we allowed it to file in 1987, that Nebraska irrigators are wasting water diverted in the pivotal reach. But there is more to the amendments than that, and we agree with the Master that Wyoming in reality is calling for a fundamental modification of the settled apportionment scheme established in 1945, without alleging a change in conditions that would arguably justify so bold a step.
In Nebraska II we rejected any notion that our 1945 decision and decree "impose absolute ceilings on diversions by canals taking in the pivotal reach." 507 U. S., at 602. We found that although the irrigation requirements of the lands served by the canals were calculated in the prior proceedings, those calculations were used to "determin[e] the appropriate apportionment of the pivotal reach, not to impose a cap on the canals' total diversions, either individually or cumulatively." Ibid. This was clearly indicated, we observed, by the fact that "Paragraph V of the decree, which sets forth the apportionment, makes no mention of diversion ceilings and expressly states that Nebraska is free to allocate
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