Texas v. New Mexico

• Decision Date: 17 June 1983
• Docket Number: No. 65,O,65
• Parties: State of TEXAS, Plaintiff v. State of NEW MEXICO. rig
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

462 U.S. 554

103 S.Ct. 2558

77 L.Ed.2d 1

State of TEXAS, Plaintiff

v State of NEW MEXICO.

No. 65, Orig.

Argued March 30, 1983.

Decided June 17, 1983.

Syllabus

The Pecos River Compact was entered into by Texas and New Mexico (and approved by Congress) to govern allocation of the waters of the Pecos River, which rises in New Mexico and flows into Texas. Article III(a) of the Compact requires that New Mexico "not deplete by man's activities the flow of the Pecos River at the New Mexico-Texas state line below an amount which will give to Texas a quantity of water equivalent to that available to Texas under the 1947 condition." The Compact establishes the Pecos River Commission (Commission)—consisting of one Commissioner from each State and a nonvoting representative of the United States—and empowers it to make all findings of fact necessary to administer the Compact. The two voting Commissioners were unable to agree when a dispute arose between the States concerning the methods for determining annual shortfalls of state-line water flow with regard to Texas' right to receive as much water as it would have received under the consumption conditions prevailing in New Mexico in 1947. Texas filed this action against New Mexico (the United States intervened to protect its claims on the waters of the river), alleging that New Mexico had breached its obligations under Article III(a) of the Compact and seeking a decree commanding New Mexico to deliver water in accordance with the Compact. This Court appointed a Special Master, who ultimately filed the report involved here, and the parties filed various exceptions thereto.

Held:

1. Exceptions of the Government and New Mexico to the Master's recommendation that either the United States Commissioner or some other third party be given a vote on the Commission and be empowered to participate in all Commission deliberations are sustained. Once congressional consent is given to an interstate compact as required by the Compact Clause, the compact is transformed into a law of the United States, and unless the compact is unconstitutional, no court may order relief inconsistent with its express terms. Here, the Compact provides that the Government Commissioner shall not have the right to vote, and no other third party is given the right to vote on matters before the Commission. This Court cannot rewrite the Compact so as to provide for a third, tie-breaking vote. Moreover, the Court's equitable powers have never been exercised so as to appoint quasi-administrative offi- cials to control the division of interstate waters on a day-to-day basis. Pp. 564-566.

2. New Mexico's exception to the Master's alternative recommendation to continue the suit as presently postured is overruled, and the recommendation is accepted. There is no merit to New Mexico's contention that this Court may do nothing more than review the Commission's official actions, and that the case should be dismissed if it is found either that there is no Commission action to review or that actions taken by the Commission were not arbitrary or capricious. This Court's original jurisdiction to resolve controversies between two States extends to a suit by one State to enforce its compact with another State or to declare rights under a compact. Here, fundamental structural considerations of th Compact militate against New Mexico's theory, since if all questions under the Compact had to be decided by the Commission in the first instance, New Mexico could indefinitely prevent authoritative Commission action solely by exercising its veto on the Commission. Nor do the Compact's express terms constitute the Commission as the sole arbiter of disputes over New Mexico's Article III obligations. Moreover, if authorized representatives of the compacting States have reached an agreement on action to be taken by the Commission, this Court will not review the Commission's action at the behest of one of the States absent extraordinary cause or a precise mandate from Congress. Pp. 566-571.

3. Texas' exception to the Master's recommendation against approval of Texas' motion to adopt a so-called "Double Mass Analysis" method for determining when a shortfall in state-line flows has occurred is overruled. The Compact provides that until the Commission adopts a more feasible method, an "inflow-outflow method" shall be used to measure state-line shortfalls. The "Double Mass Analysis" is not close enough to what the Compact terms an "inflow-outflow method, as described in the Report of the Engineering Advisory Committee" to make it acceptable for use in determining New Mexico's compliance with its Article III obligations. While the Compact leaves the Commission free to adopt the "Double Mass Analysis," this Court may not apply it against New Mexico in the absence of Commission action. Pp. 571-574.

Exceptions to Special Master's report sustained in part and overruled in part.

R. Lambeth Townsend, Austin, Tex., for plaintiff.

Charlotte Uram, Santa Fe, N.M., for defendant.

Justice BRENNAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

For the second time we consider exceptions to a report of the Special Master in this case. The States of Texas and New Mexico and the United States have filed exceptions to a report submitted by the Special Master on September 10, 1982 (1982 Report). We sustain an exception in which both New Mexico and the United States concur, overrule all other exceptions, and return the case to the Special Master for a final decision on the basic issue in dispute—whether New Mexico is in compliance with obligations imposed by the Pecos River Compact.

I

The Pecos River rises in north-central New Mexico and flows in a southerly direction into Texas until it joins the Rio Grande near Langtry, Texas.¹ It is the principal river in eastern New Mexico, draining roughly one-fifth of the State, and it is a major tributary of the Rio Grande.

Due in large part to many natural difficulties,² the Pecos barely supports a level of development reached in the first third of this century. If development in New Mexico were not restricted, especially the groundwater pumping near Roswell, no water at all might reach Texas in many years. As things stand, the amount of water Texas receives in any year varies with a number of factors besides beneficial consumption in New Mexico. These factors include, primarily, precipitation in the Pecos Basin over the preceding several years, evaporation in the McMillan and Alamogordo Reservoirs, and nonbeneficial consumption of water by salt cedars and other riverbed vegetation.

After 20 years of false starts,³ in 1945 Texas and New Mexico commenced negotiations on a compact to allocate the waters of the Pecos Basin. A Compact Commission was formed, consisting of three Commissioners, representing the two States and the United States. In January 1948, the Compact Commission's engineering advisory committee submitted a lengthy report (1947 Study), the central portion of which was a set of river routing studies describing six "conditions" of the Pecos, one of which consisted of the actual conditions as of the beginning of 1947.⁴ Each of the studies was embodied in a 41-column table accounting for all known inflows and outflows of water on the river during each of the years between 1905 and 1946.⁵ The engineering advisory committee also drafted a "Manual of Inflow-Outflow Methods of Measuring Changes in Stream-Flow Depletion" (Inflow-Outflow Manual), which contained charts and tables, derived from data in the 1947 Study, to be used in determining how much water Texas should expect to receive over any particular period for any particular levels of precipitation, under the consumption conditions prevailing in New Mexico in 1947.

On the basis of the 1947 Study and the Inflow-Outflow Manual, the two States successfully negotiated the Pecos River Compact. It was signed by the commissioners from both States on December 3, 1948, and thereafter ratified by both state legislatures and—as required under the Compact Clause of the Constitution ⁶—approved by Congress. 63 Stat. 159 (1949). The 1947 Study and the Inflow-Outflow Manual were incorporated into Senate Document No. 109, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. (1949) (S.Doc. 109), and they unquestionably provided the basis upon which Congress approved the compact, see S.Rep. No. 409, 81st Cong., 1st Sess. (1949).

The crucial substantive provision of the Pecos River Compact is found at Art. III(a): "New Mexico shall not deplete by man's activities the flow of the Pecos River at the New Mexico-Texas state line below an amount which will give to Texas a quantity of water equivalent to that available to Texas under the 1947 condition." The term "1947 condition" was expressly defined as "that situation in the Pecos River Basin as described and defined in the Report of the Engineering Advisory Committee." Art. II(g). In turn, the Report was defined to include "basic data, processes, and analyses utilized in preparing that report," Art. II(f), and "deplete by man's activities" was defined to include any "beneficial consumptive uses of water within the Pecos River Basin," but to exclude diminutions of flow due to "encroachment of salt cedars" or "deterioration of the channel of the stream," Art. II(e).

The Compact also established the Pecos River Commission as a permanent body, in more or less the same form that it had during the negotiations on the Compact. It was to have three Commissioners, one from each State and one representing the United States, but the United States representative could not vote. Art. V(a). Accordingly, the Commission could take official action only with the concurrence of both state Commissioners. The Commission was given broad powers to make all findings of fact necessary to administer the compact, Art. V(d)(5)-(10), as well as to "[e]ngage in studies of water supplies of the Pecos River" and to "[c]ollect, analyze, correlate, preserve, and report on data as to...