434
Opinion of the Court
separated geographically, many of them physically independent in operation, but they are authorized in separate acts from year to year and are to be constructed at different times over a considerable span of years." Id., at 733.
Justice Jackson's description of the magnitude of the Central Valley Project makes one proposition perfectly clear: to characterize every drop of water that flows through that immense project as "flood water" simply because flood control is among the purposes served by the project unnecessarily dilutes the language of the statute. The text of the statute does not include the words "flood control project." Rather, it states that immunity attaches to "any damage from or by floods or flood waters . . . ." Accordingly, the text of the statute directs us to determine the scope of the immunity conferred, not by the character of the federal project or the purposes it serves, but by the character of the waters that cause the relevant damage and the purposes behind their release.
IV
The Government has asked us to take judicial notice of certain basic facts about the Friant Division of the Central Valley Project and about the waters flowing through that division and, more particularly, through the Madera Canal. Although petitioner will have an opportunity to challenge those details on remand, we accept them for purposes of this opinion.
The two major rivers supplying water to the Central Valley Project are the Sacramento in the north, and the San Joaquin in the south. From its headwaters in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, the San Joaquin flows in a southwesterly direction into a reservoir, known as Millerton Lake, just above the Friant Dam. The reservoir has a storage capacity of 520,500 acre-feet of water. In dry years, the total flow in the river does not produce that amount, but on average, the
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