18
Opinion of the Court
the total amount of storage in certain dams to protect senior, downstream rights to natural flow. Id., at 630. But although our refusal in 1945 to apportion storage water was driven by a respect for the statutory and contractual regime in place at the time, we surely did not dismiss storage water as immaterial to the proper allocation of the natural flow in the pivotal reach. And while our decree expressly protected those with rights to storage water, it did so on the condition that storage water would continue to be distributed "in accordance with . . . lawful contracts . . . ." Id., at 669. This is the very condition that Wyoming now seeks to vindicate.
Wyoming argues that the United States no longer abides by the governing law in administering the storage water contracts. First, it contends that the Government pays no heed to federal law's beneficial use limitations on the disposition of storage water but rather "releas[es] storage water on demand to the canals in the pivotal reach without regard to how the water is used." Brief for Wyoming in Response to Exceptions of Nebraska and United States to Third Interim Report 6 (emphasis deleted) (hereinafter Response Brief). This liberality allegedly harms Wyoming contractees whose storage supply is wasted, as well as junior Wyoming appropriators who are subject to the senior call of the United States to refill the reservoirs and are consequently deprived of the natural flow they would otherwise receive.
Second, Wyoming claims that federal policy in drought years encourages contract users to exploit this failure of the Government to police consumption. It points out that in years of insufficient supply, the United States has calculated each water district's average use of storage water in prior years, and then allocated to each district a certain percentage of that average, according to what the overall supply will bear. The United States has then further reduced the allotment of each individual canal within a district by the
Page: Index Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007