26
Opinion of Thomas, J.
the United States to comply with applicable riparian law and with its storage contracts, our 1945 decree in fact does not. That is, we "anticipated that the storage [water] supply would 'be left for distribution in accordance with the contracts which govern it,' " ante, at 17 (emphasis added) (quoting Nebraska I, 325 U. S., at 631), but we did not mandate that result. To the contrary, Paragraph VI of the decree states expressly that "[s]torage water shall not be affected by this decree" and that storage water shall be distributed "without interference because of this decree." Id., at 669. Accord, Brief for Wyoming in Response to Exceptions of Nebraska and the United States 19 ("No one asserted [in 1945] a need for the Court affirmatively to require the [Federal Government's] compliance with federal law; such compliance was assumed").
Because Wyoming's Fourth Cross-Claim against the United States therefore involves neither "an application for enforcement of rights already recognized in the decree" nor a request for "a modification of the decree," Nebraska II, supra, at 590, I do not understand why the Court chooses to entertain that claim as part of the present proceeding. It is well established that "[w]e seek to exercise our original jurisdiction sparingly and are particularly reluctant to take jurisdiction of a suit where the plaintiff has another adequate forum in which to settle his claim." United States v. Nevada, 412 U. S. 534, 538 (1973) (per curiam). This particular reluctance applies squarely to "controversies between the United States and a State," of which we have "original but not exclusive jurisdiction." 28 U. S. C. § 1251(b)(2) (emphasis added). Thus, in United States v. Nevada, we declined to exercise jurisdiction over a dispute between those parties about intrastate water rights, noting that such dispute was "within the jurisdiction of the District Court" in Nevada. 412 U. S., at 538. Accord, id., at 539-540 ("Any possible dispute with California with respect to United States water
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