U.S. v. Imperial Irr. Dist.

• Decision Date: 18 August 1977
• Docket Number: Nos. 71-2124,73-1333,73-1388,s. 71-2124
• Citation: 559 F.2d 509
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT, a corporation, Defendant-Appellee, John M. Bryant et al., Defendants-Appellees, State of California, Defendant-Appellee, Ben Yellen et al., Appellants. Ben YELLEN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Cecil D. ANDRUS * et al., Defendants-Appellants. Ben YELLEN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Cecil D. ANDRUS * et al., Defendants-Appellants, W. L. Jacobs et al., Defendants-Appellants.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

Page 509

559 F.2d 509

10 ERC 1639

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. IMPERIAL IRRIGATION DISTRICT, a corporation, Defendant-Appellee, John M. Bryant et al., Defendants-Appellees, State of California, Defendant-Appellee, Ben Yellen et al., Appellants.

Ben YELLEN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Cecil D. ANDRUS ^* et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Ben YELLEN et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. Cecil D. ANDRUS * et al., Defendants-Appellants, W. L. Jacobs et al., Defendants-Appellants.

Nos. 71-2124, 73-1333, 73-1388.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Aug. 18, 1977.

Arthur Brunwasser, San Francisco, Cal., argued, for appellants.

Charles W. Bender, O'Melveny & Myers, Los Angeles, Cal., argued, for Landowners.

Reginald L. Knox, Jr., Douglas Noble, argued, for Imperial.

Horton, Knox, Carter & Rutherford, El Centro, Cal., argued, for appellee.

Walter Kiechel, Jr., Asst. Atty. Gen., Lands Div., U. S. Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., argued for Secretary of Interior.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.

Before BROWNING and KOELSCH, Circuit Judges, and WOLLENBERG, ^** District Judge.

WOLLENBERG, District Judge:

The Imperial Valley in southern California is a highly productive agricultural area. This is due to an extensive irrigation system which distributes water obtained from the Colorado River, for without this irrigation water the Imperial Valley would be an unproductive desert. At issue in these cases is whether certain restrictions in the reclamation laws limit the delivery of irrigation water to resident landowners and whether water deliveries are limited to only 160 acres of the property held by each private landowner.

I. Historical Overview.

Because it is almost entirely below sea level, it was recognized as early as the middle of the nineteenth century that irrigation of the Imperial Valley with water diverted from the Colorado River was possible by gravity flow. A private corporation organized in 1896 as the California Development Corporation made the initial appropriations and diversions of Colorado River water. The water was taken from the River just north of the boundary between Mexico and the United States. However, in order to avoid high mesa and sandhill country north of the international boundary that separated the Colorado River from the Imperial Valley, the water was carried by canal for approximately 50 miles through Mexico. After the canal re-entered the United States, the water was distributed to land in the Imperial Valley through a system of irrigation canals owned by seven mutual water companies. These water companies had been organized by the California Development Company and were later acquired by the individual landowners whose land received the water.

In 1905, the Colorado River broke through its banks with disastrous results. The River changed its course and for many months flowed through the washed-out intake of the California Development Company into the canal in Mexico and then into the Imperial Valley. The flood created the Salton Sea with a surface area of over 330,000 acres within the Imperial Valley and threatened to destroy the entire area. The California Development Company could not contain the River. Danger to the tracks of the Southern Pacific led that company to advance funds to the California Development Company to control the River, and the railroad took a controlling interest in the Development Company as security. The railroad eventually succeeded itself in closing the breach in the river bank and returned the River to its channel. In 1916, the railroad foreclosed on the Development Company's interests and then transferred those interests to the Imperial Irrigation District (hereinafter "District"). ¹

At first, the District distributed water to the seven mutual water companies on a wholesale basis. By 1923, however, the District acquired all of the mutual water companies. Since then, it has been the only entity diverting, transporting, and supplying water from the Colorado River to agricultural lands in the Imperial Valley.

The interstate allocation of water from the Colorado River, control of flooding, regulation of water supplies on a predictable and useful basis, and the construction of a canal to the Imperial Valley that did not pass through Mexico were major concerns of not only Imperial Valley landowners but of the seven states in the Colorado Basin during the early years of the 1900s. Extensive efforts to resolve these problems led first to the agreement in 1922 between Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming known as the Colorado River Compact and then to the passage in 1928 of the Boulder Canyon Project Act (hereinafter "Project Act"). 45 Stat.1057, 43 U.S.C. §§ 617 et seq. The Project Act provided, inter alia, for ratification of the Colorado River Compact, the construction of Boulder (now, Hoover) Dam, and the construction of Imperial Dam where water was to be diverted to a canal running to the Imperial Valley. The canal was to run entirely through United States territory and hence received the name All-American Canal.

By the time the Project Act became effective in 1929, extensive private efforts had resulted in irrigation of almost 425,000 acres in the Imperial Valley. Since then, very little additional irrigated land has been added in the District. In 1932, the District entered into a contract with the United States providing for the construction of the Imperial Dam and the All-American Canal by the United States and repayment of certain costs by the District. Landowners in the Coachella Valley, north of the Imperial Valley, formed their own water district and eventually negotiated their own contract with the government for construction of facilities to deliver water to that Valley. Water delivery to the Imperial Valley through the All-American Canal began in 1940 and since 1942 the District's entire water supply has been carried through the All-American Canal. The District subsequently disposed of its interests in Mexico.

The 1932 contract with the District did not specifically provide for any acreage limitations on private lands receiving water through the massive projects being built by the United States. Due to the combination of a 1933 letter from the Secretary of the Interior to the District and the inaction of the Department of the Interior, no acreage limitations that were contained in the reclamation laws were enforced with respect to privately owned lands in the Imperial Valley. In 1964, the Solicitor of the Department of the Interior concluded that the previous Department interpretation of the law and administrative practice were incorrect and that the acreage limitations should apply to privately owned lands.

The Department of the Interior attempted to negotiate a new contract with the District that would incorporate acreage limitations but the negotiations failed. In 1967, therefore, the government filed an action for declaratory relief against the District. The complaint sought a declaratory judgment that the land limitation provisions of the reclamation law applied to privately owned lands in the District that received Colorado River water through the All-American Canal. The government specifically relied upon Section 46 of the Omnibus Adjustment Act of 1926, 44 Stats. 649, as amended, 43 U.S.C. § 423e (hereafter "Section 46"), ² as the acreage limitation statute that applied. ³

In its suit, the government did not rely upon Section 5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902, 32 Stat. 389, 43 U.S.C. § 431. That statute contains an earlier version of acreage limitations on lands receiving water through federal reclamation projects. It also restricts the delivery of water through federal reclamation projects to lands owned by residents of the reclamation project area. ⁴ A group of Imperial Valley residents, dissatisfied with government nonenforcement of this statute in the Imperial Valley, brought suit in 1969 against the government to enforce the residency requirement of Section 5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902.

The government thus found itself in the position of claiming that, despite its previous inaction, one section of the reclamation law applied in the Imperial Valley while also defending its nonapplication of another section of the reclamation law which is in one respect similar to the statute it sought to apply. The cases were heard by two different judges and eventually the government's position was rejected in both cases. Before reaching the substantive matters raised in the appeals from these two decisions, we are obliged to consider procedural complications and questions of standing.

II. Standing.

A. Yellen v. Andrus, Nos. 73-1333, 73-1388.

This action (hereinafter "the residency case") was instituted by several individuals who resided within the boundaries of the Imperial Irrigation District but who owned no farm land in the District or anywhere else in the United States. They sought to compel the Secretary of the Interior and various officials of the Department of the Interior to enforce the residency requirements of Section 5 of the Reclamation Act of 1902, 43 U.S.C. § 431. ⁵ Their case was brought in the form of a mandamus action under 28 U.S.C. § 1361.

In 1971, the district court granted partial summary judgment against the government, holding that 43 U.S.C. § 431 applies to private lands within the Imperial Irrigation District receiving water from the Boulder Canyon Project through the All-American Canal. Yellen v. Hickel, 335 F.Supp. 200 (S.D.Cal.1971). Thereafter, various landowners in the Imperial Valley intervened and raised arguments not previously set forth by the government. A full trial on the merits was then held. The district court issued findings of fact and conclusions of law and again held for the plaintiffs. Yellen v. Hickel, 352 F.Supp. 1300 (S.D.Cal.1972). Judgment in favor of the plaintiffs...