16
Opinion of the Court
action brought under the decree. Second, they maintain that any claim turning on the United States's failure to comply with individual contracts for the release of storage water ought to be relegated to an action brought by individual contract holders in a federal district court and that, indeed, just such an action is currently pending in Goshen Irrigation District v. United States, No. C89-0161-J (D. Wyo., filed June 23, 1989).
The Master addressed both objections. As to the first, he said that "even though the decree did not apportion storage water, it was framed based in part on assumptions about storage water rights and deliveries," and that therefore "Wyoming should have the opportunity to go forward with her claims that the United States has violated the law and contracts rights and that such violations have the effect of undermining Wyoming's apportionment." Third Interim Report 70. The Master found the second point "unpersuasive" because "neither Wyoming nor Nebraska [is a party] to the [Goshen] case [brought by the individual contractors], and the federal district court, therefore, does not have jurisdiction to consider whether any violations that may be proven on the part of the United States will have the effect of undermining the 1945 apportionment decree." Id., at 71. We agree with the Master on both counts.
The availability of storage water and its distribution under storage contracts was a predicate to the original apportionment decree. Our 1945 opinion expressly recognized the significance of storage water to the lands irrigated by the pivotal reach, noting that over the prior decade storage water was on average over half of the total supply and that over 90 percent of the irrigated lands had storage rights as well as rights to natural flow. Nebraska I, 325 U. S., at 605. We pointed out that Nebraska appropriators in the pivotal reach had "greater storage water rights" than Wyoming appropriators, id., at 645, a fact that helped "tip the scales in
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