BRYANT v. YELLEN

MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.

When the Boulder Canyon Project Act, 45 Stat. 1057, 43 U. S. C. § 617 et seq. (Project Act), became effective in 1929, a large area in Imperial Valley, Cal., was already being irrigated by Colorado River water brought to the Valley by a privately owned delivery and distribution system. Pursuant to the Project Act, the United States constructed and the Imperial Irrigation District (District) agreed to pay for a new diversion dam and a new canal connecting the dam with the District. The Project Act was supplemental to the reclamation laws, which as a general rule limited water deliveries from reclamation project to 160 acres under single ownership. The Project Act, however, required that the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary) observe rights to Colorado River water that had been perfected under state law at the time the Act became effective. In the course of contracting with the District for the building of the new dam and canal and for the delivery of water to the District, the United States represented that the Project Act did not impose acreage limitations on lands that already had vested or present rights to Colorado River water. The United States officially adhered to that position until 1964 when it repudiated its prior construction of the Project Act and sued the District, claiming that the 160-acre limitation contained in the reclamation law applies to all privately owned lands in the District, whether or not they had been irrigated in 1929. The District Court found for the District and its landowners, 322 F.Supp. 11 (SD Cal. 1971), but the Court of Appeals reversed and sustained the Government's position, 559 F.2d 509 (CA9 1977). We now reverse the Court of Appeals with respect to those lands that were irrigated in 1929 and with respect to which the District has been adjudicated to have a perfected water right as of that date, a water right which, until 1964, the United States Department of the Interior officially represented foreclosed the application of acreage limitations. The judgment is otherwise vacated.

I

Imperial Valley is an area located south of the Salton Sea in southeastern California. It lies below sea level, and is an arid desert in its natural state. In 1901, however, irrigation began in the Valley, using water diverted from the Colorado River, which in that area marks the border between California and Arizona. Until at least 1940, irrigation water was brought to the Valley by means of a canal and distribution system that were completely privately financed. On June 25, 1929, when the Project Act became effective, the District1 was diverting, transporting, and delivering water to 424,145 acres of privately owned and very productive farmland in Imperial Valley.2 Under neither state law nor private irrigation arrangements in existence in Imperial Valley prior to 1929 was there any restriction on the number of acres that a single landholder could own and irrigate.

Prior to 1929 and for several years thereafter, the water diverted from the Colorado River was carried to the Valley through the Alamo Canal, which left the river north of the border with Mexico but then traversed Mexican territory for some 50 miles before turning northward into Imperial Valley. This distribution system, entirely privately financed and owned, comprised approximately 1,700 miles of main and lateral canals, all serving to divert and deliver the necessary waters to the lands in Imperial Valley.

The Project Act was the culmination of the efforts of the seven States in the Colorado River Basin to control flooding, regulate water supplies on a predictable basis, allocate waters among the Upper and Lower Basin States and among the States in each basin, and connect the river to the Imperial Valley by a canal that did not pass through Mexico.3 In 1922, the seven States executed the Colorado River Compact (Compact) allocating the waters of the river between the Upper and Lower Basins, and among other things providing in Art. VIII that "[p]resent perfected rights to the beneficial use of waters of the Colorado River System are unimpaired by this compact."4 The Project Act, passed in 1928 and effective in 1929, implemented and ratified the Compact; contained its own formula for allocating Lower Basin water among California, Arizona, and Nevada, Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546 (1963); and authorized the construction of the works required for the harnessing and more efficient utilization of the unruly river. The principal works of the Project, consisting of the Hoover Dam at Black Canyon and the storage facilities behind it, served to implement the division of the Compact. The dam was completed and storage began in 1935.5

Section 1 of the Project Act, which provided for the dam at Black Canyon, also authorized the construction of a new canal, the All-American Canal, which would replace the Alamo Canal and would traverse only territory located in the United States. A new diversion dam for Imperial Valley water was also authorized. Section 1 went on to provide that no charge should be made for the storage or delivery of irrigation or potable water to Imperial or Coachella Valley.6

Section 4 (a) of the Project Act conditioned the effectiveness of the Act on the ratification of the Compact by the signatory States.7 Section 4 (b), as well as requiring contractual provision for the repayment of specified costs with respect to the Hoover Dam, required that before any money was appropriated for the Imperial Valley works, the Secretary was to make provision for revenues "by contract or otherwise" to insure payment of all "expenses of construction, operation, and maintenance of said main canal and appurtenant structures in the manner provided in the reclamation law." Section 5 authorized the Secretary to contract for the storage of water and for its delivery at such points on the river and the canal as were agreed upon. Contracts were to be for permanent service and were required before any person would be entitled to stored water.

Section 6 of the Project Act, of critical importance in these cases, mandated that the works authorized by § 1 were to be used: "First, for river regulation, improvement of navigation, and flood control; second, for irrigation and domestic uses and satisfaction of present perfected rights in pursuance of Article VIII of said Colorado River compact; and third, for power." Section 9 authorized the opening to entry of the public lands that would become irrigable by the Project but in tracts not greater than 160 acres in size in accordance with the provisions of the reclamation law.

Section 14 provided that the Project Act should be deemed supplemental to the reclamation law, "which said reclamation law shall govern the construction, operation, and management of the works herein authorized, expect as otherwise herein provided." The "reclamation law" referred to was defined in § 12 as the Act of June 17, 1902 (Reclamation Act), 32 Stat. 388, and Acts amendatory thereof and supplemental thereto. One of the statutes amendatory of or supplemental to the Reclamation Act was the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926 (1926 Act), § 46 of which, 44 Stat. (part 2) 649, 43 U. S. C. § 423e, forbade delivery of reclamation project water to any irrigable land held in private ownership by one owner in excess of 160 acres,8 and required owners to execute recordable contracts for the sale of excess lands before such lands could receive project water.

Pursuant to the Project Act, the United States and the District entered into a contract on December 1, 1932, providing for the construction of the Imperial Dam and the All-American Canal. The District undertook to pay the cost of the works, and to include within itself certain public lands of the United States and other specified lands.9 The United States undertook to deliver to the Imperial Dam the water which would be carried by the new canal to the various lands to be served by it. The contract contained no acreage limitation provision. Pursuant to this contract, the United States constructed the Imperial Dam in the Colorado River—some distance below Black Canyon but upriver from the existing point of diversion—and the All-American Canal connecting the dam and Imperial Valley. Use of the canal began in 1940, and by 1942 it carried all Colorado River water used by Imperial Valley.10

Article 31 of the contract between the District and the United States provided that the United States would not be bound by the contract until and unless court proceedings had been instituted by the District and a final judgment obtained confirming the authorization and the validity of the contract.11 Such an action, entitled Hewes v. All Persons, No. 15460, Superior Court, Imperial County, was instituted and final judgment was entered on July 1, 1933, confirming the validity of the contract in all respects. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 79-435, pp. 120a-154a. In connection with these proceedings, the then Secretary, Ray Lyman Wilbur, on February 24, 1933, submitted a letter to the District dealing with the question whether the 160-acre limitation of the reclamation law was applicable in Imperial Valley. Among other things, the letter stated:

The trial court in the Hewes case expressly found and concluded that eligibility for project water was not limited to 160-acre tracts in single ownership.13 An appeal in the case was dismissed before judgment. The United States was not a party to the action.

The Wilbur letter expressing the view that lands under irrigation at the time the Project Act was passed and having a present water right were not subject to the 160-acre limitation remained the official view of the Department of the Interior until 196414 when the Department adopted the view of its then Solicitor that the limitation should have applied to all Imperial Valley lands in private ownership.

Meanwhile, it having become apparent that neither the Compact nor the Project Act settled to the satisfaction of the Lower Basin States how the water allocated to them should be divided, an original action was begun in this Court in 1952 to settle this fundamental question and related issues, including the ascertainment of present perfected rights the unimpaired preservation of which was required by both the Compact and the Project Act. After more than 10 years of litigation, the opinion in Arizona v. California was handed down on June 3, 1963. 373 U.S. 546. Although the dispute among the Lower Basin States was at the heart of the controversy, for present purposes the primary aspect of the case was the recognition given to present perfected rights in the opinion and the ensuing decrees.

The opinion recognized that under § 14 of the Project Act, the construction, operation, and management of the works were to be subject to the provisions of the reclamation law, except as the Act otherwise provided, and that one of the most significant limitations in the Project Act on the Secretary's authority to contract for the delivery of water is the requirement to satisfy present perfected rights, "a matter of intense importance to those who had reduced their water rights to actual beneficial use at the time the Act became effective." 373 U. S., at 584. The decree, which was entered on March 9, 1964, 376 U.S. 340, defined a perfected right as:

Present perfected rights were defined as those perfected rights "existing as of June 25, 1929, the effective date of the Boulder Canyon Project Act." Ibid. The decree also provided for the future determination of the specific present perfected rights in each of the Lower Basin States. A supplemental decree was eventually forthcoming, 439 U.S. 419 (1979), and in that decree the Imperial Irrigation District was adjudged to have a present perfected right

As already indicated, the Department of the Interior repudiated the Wilbur interpretation of the Project Act in 1964. It then sought to include its revised position in a renegotiated contract with the District. When the District refused to accept the Department's position, the United States sued the District in 1967 for a declaratory judgment that the excess-acreage limitation of § 46 applied to all private lands in the Valley. The District Court permitted several Imperial Valley landowners to intervene as defendants representing the certified class of all landowners owning more than 160 acres.15 It then ruled against the Government, holding for several reasons that "the land limitation provisions of reclamation law have no application to privately owned lands lying within the Imperial Irrigation District" and that the District is not bound to observe such limitations. 322 F. Supp., at 27. The Department of the Interior recommended and the Solicitor General decided, after reviewing the case, that an appeal not be prosecuted on behalf of the United States.16 In consequence, respondents, a group of Imperial Valley residents, who had been given leave to participate as amici in the District Court and who desired to purchase the excess lands that might become available if § 46 were held applicable, attempted to intervene for purpose of appeal, but the District Court denied the motion. The Court of Appeals reversed the denial, 559 F. 2d, at 543-544, and proceeded to hold that the appealing intervenors had standing under Art. III of the Constitution; that Hewes v. All Persons was not conclusive with respect to acreage limitation; that the clear import of § 46 and the Project Act was that the 160-acre limitation is applicable to the Imperial Valley; and that the Department's administrative practice over the years did not bar application of the limitation to the Valley.

Because of the importance of these cases, we granted the petitions for writs of certiorari filed by the District, the landowners, and the State of California. 444 U.S. 978 (1979).

II

As a preliminary matter, we agree with the Court of Appeals that the respondents who sought to enter the suit when the United States forwent an appeal from the District Court's adverse decision had standing to intervene and press the appeal on their own behalf. Respondents, most of whom are farmworkers, reside in Imperial Valley. The essence of their claim was that they desired to purchase farmlands in Imperial Valley and that if § 46 were applied as they believed it should be, there would be excess lands available for purchase at prices below the market value for irrigated land.17 The Court of Appeals, although recognizing that no owner of excess lands would be required to sell, concluded that it would be highly improbable that all owners of excess lands would prefer to withdraw their irrigable lands from agriculture in order to avoid § 46. In these circumstances, the Court of Appeals ruled that under Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Dev. Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977), and other cases, respondents had standing even though they could not with certainty establish that they would be able to purchase excess lands if § 46 were held applicable.18

This was a proper application of our cases. It being unlikely that any of the 800 owners of excess lands would sell land at below current market prices absent the applicability of § 46 and it being likely that excess lands would become available at less than market prices if § 46 were applied, the Court of Appeals properly concluded that respondents had a sufficient stake in the outcome of the controversy to afford them standing to appeal the District Court's decision.

III

We are unable, however, to agree with the Court of Appeals that Congress intended that the 160-acre limitation of the 1926 Act would apply to the lands under irrigation in Imperial Valley in 1929.19 Under § 14 of the Project Act, the construction, operation, and management of the project works were to be governed by the reclamation law, but only if not otherwise provided for in the Project Act. Section 46 of the 1926 Act is one of the reclamation laws; and its acreage limitation, which expressly applies to contracts for "constructing, operating, and maintaining" project works, would appear to govern the delivery of project water unless its applicability is foreclosed by some other provision of the Project Act. The Court of Appeals, erroneously we think, found no such preclusion in § 6 of the Act.

Concededly, nothing in § 14, in § 46, or in the reclamation law in general would excuse the Secretary from recognizing his obligation to satisfy present perfected rights in Imperial Valley that were provided for by Art. VIII of the Compact and § 6 of the Project Act and adjudicated by this Court in Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546 (1963). The Court of Appeals neverthless held that § 46 could be applied consistently with § 6 because the perfected rights in Imperial Valley were owned by and would be adjudicated to the District, not to individual landowners, who were merely members of a class for whose benefit the water rights had been acquired and held in trust. Individual farmers, the Court of Appeals said, had no right under the law to a particular proportion of the District's water. Applying § 46 and denying water to excess lands not sold would merely require reallocation of the water among those eligible to receive it and would not reduce the water which the District was entitled to have delivered in accordance with its perfected rights.

We find this disposition of the § 6 defense to the application of the 1926 Act's acreage limitation to be unpersuasive. Arizona v. California, supra, at 584, recognized that "one of the most significant limitations" on the Secretary's power under the Project Act was the requirement that he satisfy present perfected rights, a matter of great significance to those who had reduced their water rights to beneficial use prior to 1929. Accordingly, in our initial decree, the perfected right protected by § 6 was defined with some care: a right that had been acquired in accordance with state law and that had been exercised by the actual diversion of a specific quantity of water and its application to a defined area of land.20 In our supplemental decree, entered prior to the opinion of the Court of Appeals denying rehearing and rehearing en banc, there was decreed to the District a present perfected water right of 2.6 million acre-feet of diversions from the mainstream or the quantity of water necessary to supply the consumptive use required to irrigate 424,145 acres and related uses, whichever was less, with a priority date of 1901. 439 U. S., at 429. We thus determined that, as of 1929, the District had perfected its rights under state law to divert the specified amount of water and had actually diverted that water to irrigate the defined quantity and area of land. As we see it, the Court of Appeals failed to take adequate account of § 6 of the Project Act and its implementation in our opinion and decrees filed in the Arizona v. California litigation.

In the first place, it bears emphasizing that the § 6 perfected right is a water right originating under state law. In Arizona v. California, we held that the Project Act vested in the Secretary the power to contract for project water deliveries independent of the direction of § 8 of the Reclamation Act to proceed in accordance with state law and of the admonition of § 18 of the Project Act not to interfere with state law. 373 U. S., at 586-588.21 We nevertheless clearly recognized that § 6 of the Project Act, requiring satisfaction of present perfected rights, was an unavoidable limitation on the Secretary's power and that in providing for these rights the Secretary must take account of state law. In this respect, state law was not displaced by the Project Act and must be consulted in determining the content and characteristics of the water right that was adjudicated to the District by our decree.22

It may be true, as the Court of Appeals said, that no individual farm in the District has a permanent right to any specific proportion of the water held in trust by the District. But there is no doubt that prior to 1929 the District, in exercising its rights as trustee, delivered water to individual farmer beneficiaries without regard to the amount of land under single ownership. It has been doing so ever since. There is no suggestion, by the Court of Appeals or otherwise, that as a matter of state law and absent the interposition of some federal duty, the District did not have the right and privilege to exercise and use its water right in this manner. Nor has it been suggested that the District, absent some duty or disability imposed by federal law, could have rightfully denied water to individual farmers owning more than 160 acres. Indeed, as a matter of state law, not only did the District's water right entitle it to deliver water to the farms in the District regardless of size, but also the right was equitably owned by the beneficiaries to whom the District was obligated to deliver water.23

These were important characteristics of the District's water right as of the effective date of the Project Act, and the question is whether Congress intended to effect serious changes in the nature of the water right by doing away with the District's privilege and duty to service farms regardless of their size. We are quite sure that Congress did not so intend and that to hold otherwise is to misunderstand the Project Act and the substantive meaning of "present perfected rights" as defined by this Court's decree.

The Court of Appeals said it would not be a breach of trust by a water district to obey the dictates of § 46, relying on Ivanhoe Irrig. Dist. v. All Parties and Persons, 53 Cal.2d 692, 712, 350 P.2d 69, 81 (1960). But the issue here is whether § 46 applies to lands already being irrigated in 1929. In the Ivanhoe proceedings, the courts were not dealing with perfected rights to water that the project there involved would furnish, nor with a Project Act that specifically required present perfected rights to be satisfied. Here, we are dealing with perfected rights protected by the Project Act; and because its water rights are to be interpreted in the light of state law, the District should now be as free of land limitations with respect to the land it was irrigating in 1929 as it was prior to the passage of the Project Act. To apply § 46 would go far toward emasculating the substance, under state law, of the water right decreed to the District, as well as substantially limiting its duties to, and the rights of, the farmer-beneficiaries in the District.24

It should also be recalled that we defined a present perfected right as one that had not only been acquired pursuant to state law but as one that had also been exercised by the diversion of water and its actual application to a specific area of land. We did not intend to decree a water right to the District under this definition, conditioned upon proof of actual diversion and use, but nevertheless to require the District to terminate service to the lands on the basis of which the right was decreed. The District has itself no power to require that excess lands be sold, and it is a contradiction in terms to say, as the Court of Appeals did, that the District has present perfected rights but that § 46 requires it to terminate deliveries to all persons with excess lands who refuse to sell.25 We consequently hold that the perfected water right decreed to the District may be exercised by it without regard to the land limitation provisions of § 46 of the 1926 Act or to any similar provisions of the reclamation laws.26

IV

The legislative history of the Project Act, which spans several years, raises no doubt in our minds about the foregoing construction of the Act.27 Our attention has been called to nothing in the relevant materials indicating that although Congress was careful to preserve present perfected rights in § 6, other provisions of the Project Act were nevertheless intended to invoke acreage limitation with respect to lands already being irrigated in Imperial Valley by means of water diverted from the Colorado River and delivered to the Valley by the District's own works. Indeed, the version of the Project Act passed in the House contained an express acreage limitation applicable to all privately owned lands; but the Senate substituted the provisions of its own bill, which did not contain an acreage limitation expressly applicable to lands then being irrigated, and it was this version which became the Project Act despite objections in the Senate that the bill should be amended to limit water deliveries to 160 acres under single ownership. There is nothing in this chain of events to suggest that Congress intended § 14, by bringing the 1926 Act into play, to interfere with the delivery of water to those lands already under irrigation in Imperial Valley and having present perfected rights that the Secretary was bound to recognize.28 If anything, the inference from the legislative history is to the contrary. This is not to say that we rely strongly on legislative materials in construing the Project Act. Statements by the opponents of a bill and failure to enact suggested amendments, although they have some weight, are not the most reliable indications of congressional intention. Ernst & Ernst v. Hochfelder, 425 U.S. 185, 204, n. 24 (1976); Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC, 395 U.S. 367, 381-382, n. 11 (1969). But we do say that the respondents have not called our attention to anything in the hearings, Committee Reports or floor debates suggesting in any substantial way that our construction of the Project Act is in error.

There can be little question that the contemporary construction of the Project Act by the parties to the 1932 contract was that the acreage limitation did not apply to lands in the District presently being irrigated. Secretary Wilbur, in his letter of February 24, 1933, stated that early in the negotiations on the All-American Canal contract, the question was raised as to the 160-acre limitation, and the view was reached that the limitation did not apply to lands that were under cultivation and having a present water right.29 There is no reason to doubt that the parties went forward on this basis, especially since language in early drafts of the contract which might have indicated an acreage limitation was eliminated in the course of the negotiations. The Imperial Valley system was a going concern at the time, and the Alamo Canal continued to supply the water to the Valley for another 10 years. It is thus a fair inference that both the Imperial Valley land-owners and the United States proceeded on the assumption that the 160-acre limit was of no concern to those who were receiving water from the Alamo Canal. This contemporaneous view of the Project Act, which supports our own construction of the legislation, was not officially repudiated by the Secretary until 1964. It is also a matter of unquestioned fact that in the ensuing years the Secretary has delivered water to the District pursuant to its contract and that the 160-acre provision of the reclamation laws has to this date never been an operative limitation with respect to lands under irrigation in 1929.30

V

There remains a further consideration. The parties stipulated and the District Court found that at the outset of this litigation, the District was irrigating approximately 14,000 more acres than the 424,145 acres under irrigation in 1929. If, in light of our perfected rights holding, an Art. III case or controversy remains with respect to the applicability of acreage limitations to this additional 14,000 acres, there would remain to be disposed of those arguments of petitioners for reversing the Court of Appeals which we have not addressed and which, if sustained, would exempt from acreage limitations all privately owned lands in Imperial Valley, a result which the District Court seemingly embraced.31 The parties, however, have not separately addressed the status of this additional 14,000 acres; nor does the record invite us to deal further with this case without additional proceedings in the lower court. We do not know, for example, whether the District is still irrigating the additional 14,000 acres, whether any of the 14,000 acres consists of lands held in excess of 160 acres, or whether for some other reason of fact or law there is not now a controversy that requires further adjudication. Even if a live dispute remains, it would be helpful to have the Court of Appeals, or the District Court in the first instance if the Court of Appeals deems it advisable, adjudicate the status of the 14,000 acres, freed of any misapprehensions about the applicability of the 160-acre limitation to lands under irrigation in 1929.

Accordingly, the judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed with respect to those lands that were irrigated on June 25, 1929, and with respect to which the District has been adjudicated to have a perfected water right as of that date. The judgment is otherwise vacated, and the case is remanded to that court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.32

So ordered.