delivered the opinion of the Court.
This injunction suit, filed in 1947 by water right claimants along the San Joaquin River below Friant Dam, California, and against local officials of the United States Bureau of Reclamation, a number of Irrigation and Utility Districts and, subsequently, against the United States as well, sought to prevent the storing and diverting of water at the dam, which is part of the Central Valley Reclamation Project. 50 Stat. 844, 850 (1937). See
United States
v.
Gerlach Live Stock Co.,
I. Aspects op the Central Valley Reclamation Project Involved.
The Project was authorized by the Congress and undertaken by the Bureau of Reclamation of the Department of the Interior pursuant to the Act of August 26, 1937, 50 Stat. 844,850. It is generally described in sufficient detail for our purposes in
United States
v.
Gerlach Live Stock Co., supra,
and
Ivanhoe Irrigation District
v.
McCracken,
The grand design of the Project was to conserve and put to maximum beneficial use the waters of the Central Valley of California, 2 comprising a third of the State's territory, and the bowl of which starts in the northern part of the State and, averaging more than 100 miles in width, extends southward some 450 miles. The northern portion of the bowl is the Sacramento Valley, containing the Sacramento River, and the southern portion is the San Joaquin Valley, containing the San Joaquin River. The Sacramento River rises in the extreme north, runs southerly to the City of Sacramento and then on into San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The San Joaquin River rises in the Sierra Nevada northeast of Fresno, runs westerly to Mendota and then northwesterly to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta where it joins the Sacramento River. The Sacramento River, because of heavier rainfall in its watershed, has surplus water, but its valley has little available tillable soil, while the San Joaquin is in the contrary situation. An imaginative engineering feat has transported some of the Sacramento surplus to the San Joaquin scarcity and permitted the waters of the latter river to be diverted to new areas for irrigation and other needs. This transportation of Sacramento water is accomplished by pumping water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta into the Delta-Mendota Canal, a lift of some 200 feet. The water then flows by gravity through this canal along the west side of the San Joaquin Valley southerly to Mendota, some 117 miles, where it is dis *613 charged into the San Joaquin River. The waters of the San Joaquin River are impounded by a dam constructed at Friant, approximately 60 miles upstream from Men-dota. Friant Dam stores the water in Millerton Lake from which it is diverted by the Madera Canal on the north to Madera County and the Friant-Kern Canal on the south to the vicinity of Bakersfield for use in those areas for irrigation and other public purposes.
The river bed at Friant is at a level approximately 240 feet higher than at Mendota,
However, agreements could not be reached with some of the claimants along this reach of the river, and this suit resulted.
II. History of the Litigation.
The suit was filed in 1947 and has been both costly and protracted.
3
It involves some 325,000 acres of land including a portion of the City of Fresno. See map in
The complaint challenged the constitutional authority of the United States to operate the Project. A three-judge court was impaneled pursuant to 28 U. S. C. § 2282, and it decided this issue presented no substantial constitutional question.
Rank
v.
Krug,
The District Court announced its opinion in the case on February 7, 1956,
“have been, now are, and will be entitled to the full natural flow of the San Joaquin River past Friant at all times . . . unless and until the physical solution hereinelsewhere described is erected and constructed [by the defendants] within a reasonable time, and thereafter operated as hereinelsewhere set forth.” Transcript of Record, Yol. Ill, p. 993.
The physical solution was a series of 10 small dams to be built at the expense of the United States along the stretch of river involved for the purpose of keeping the water at a level “equivalent” to the natural flow,
In summary, the court held that the United States was a proper party under the McCarran amendment; that the claimants had vested rights to the full natural flow of the river superior to any rights of the United States or other defendants; that the operation of Friant Dam does not permit sufficient water to pass down the river to satisfy these rights; that Congress has not authorized the taking of these rights by physical seizure but only by eminent domain exercised through judicial proceedings; that as a consequence the impounding at Friant Dam constitutes an unauthorized and unlawful invasion of rights for which damages are not adequate recompense; that this requires all of the defendants, including the United States, to be enjoined from storing or diverting or otherwise impeding the full natural flow of the San Joaquin at Friant Dam unless within a reasonable time and at its own expense the United States, or the Districts, build the dams aforesaid and put them into operation; that *617 the United States is subject to the California county of origin and watershed of origin statutes, Calif. Water Code § 10505, and §§ 11460-11463, and must first satisfy at the same charge as made for agricultural water service the full needs of the City of Fresno and Tranquility Irrigation District before diverting San Joaquin water to other areas; and finally that the United States is also subject to Calif. Water Code §§ 106 and 106.5 as to domestic-use water priority and the power of municipalities to acquire and hold water rights. 4
The Court of Appeals reversed as to the joinder of the United States, holding that it could not be made a party without its consent. It likewise found that the United States was authorized to acquire, either by physical seizure or otherwise, such of the rights of the claimants as it needed to operate the Project and that this power could not be restricted by state law. However, it found that no such authorized seizure had occurred because the Government had not sufficiently identified what rights it was seizing, and because of this equivocation of the federal officials, there was a trespass rather than a taking. It concluded, therefore, that the petitioner Reclamation Bureau officials had acted beyond their statutory authority and affirmed the injunctive features of the judgment. On rehearing, the injunction was modified to make it inapplicable to the petitioner Districts in No. 115 but the court refused to dismiss as to them.
III. The United States as a Party.
We go directly to the question of joinder of the United States as a party. We agree with the Court of Appeals on this issue and therefore do not consider the contention *618 at length. It is sufficient to say that the provision of the McCarran amendment, 66 Stat. 560, 43 U. S. C. § 666, 5 relied upon by respondents and providing that the United States may be joined in suits “for the adjudication of rights to the use of water of a river system or other source,” is not applicable here. Rather than a case involving a general adjudication of “all of the rights of various owners on a given stream,” S. Rep. No. 755, 82d Cong., 1st Sess. 9 (1951), it is a private suit to determine water rights solely between the respondents and the United States and the local Reclamation Bureau officials. In addition to the fact that all of the claimants to water rights along the river are not made parties, no relief is either asked or granted as between claimants, nor are priorities sought to *619 be established as to the appropriative and prescriptive rights asserted. But because of the presence of local Reclamation Bureau officials and the nature of the relief granted against them, the failure of the action against the United States does not end the matter. We must yet deal with the holding of the Court of Appeals that the suit against these officials is not one against the United States.
IV. Relief Granted Against Federal Officers.
The Court of Appeals correctly held that the United States was empowered to acquire the water rights of respondents by physical seizure. As early as 1937, by the Rivers and Harbors Act, 50 Stat. 844, 850, the Congress had provided that the Secretary of the Interior “may acquire by proceedings in eminent domain, or otherwise, all lands, rights-of-way, water rights, and other property necessary for said purposes . . . .” Likewise, in
United States
v.
Gerlach Live Stock Co., supra,
this Court implicitly recognized that such rights were subject to seizure when we held that Gerlach and others were entitled to compensation therefor. The question was specifically settled in
Ivanhoe Irrigation District
v.
McCracken, supra,
where we said that such rights could be acquired by the payment of compensation “either through condemnation or, if already taken, through action of the owners in the courts.”
“A casual day by day taking under these circumstances constitutes day to day trespass upon the water right. . . . The cloud cast prospectively on the water right by the assertion of a power to take creates a present injury above what has been suffered by the interference itself — a present loss in property value which cannot be compensated until it can be measured.”293 F. 2d, at 358 .
The court, therefore, permitted the suit against the petitioning Reclamation Bureau officers as one in trespass, which led it to affirm, with modification, the injunctive relief granted by the District Court.
Rather than a trespass, we conclude that there was, under respondents’ allegations, a partial taking of respondents’ claimed rights. We believe that the Court of Appeals incorrectly applied the principle of
Larson
v.
Domestic & Foreign Corp.,
The physical solution has no less direct effect. The Secretary of the Interior, the President and the Congress have authorized the Project as now constructed and operated. Its plans do not include the 10 additional dams required by the physical solution to be built at government expense. The judgment, therefore, would not only “interfere with the public administration” but also “expend itself on the public treasury . . . .” Land v. Dollar, supra, at 738. Moreover, the decree would require the United States — contrary to.the mandate of the Congress— to dispose of valuable irrigation water and deprive it of the full use and control of its reclamation facilities. It is therefore readily apparent that the relief granted operates against the United States.
Nor do we believe that the action of the Reclamation Bureau officials falls within either of the recognized exceptions to the above general rule as reaffirmed only last Term.
Malone
v.
Bowdoin,
“The mere allegation that the officer, acting officially, wrongfully holds property to which the plaintiff has title does not meet [the] requirement [that it must also appear that the action to be restrained or directed is not action of the sovereign]. True, it establishes a wrong to the plaintiff. But it does not establish that the officer, in committing that wrong, is not exercising the powers delegated to him by the sovereign.”
And, the Court added:
“the action of an officer of the sovereign (be it holding, taking or otherwise legally affecting the plaintiff’s property) can be regarded as so ‘illegal’ as to permit a suit for specific relief against the officer as an individual only if it is not within the officer’s statutory powers or, if within those powers, only if the powers, or their exercise in the particular case, are constitutionally void.” Id., at 701-702.
Since the Government, through its officers here, had the power, under authorization of Congress, to seize the property of the respondents, as held by the Court of Appeals and recognized by several cases in this Court, and this power of seizure was constitutionally permissible, as we held in Ivanhoe, supra, there can be no question that this case comes under the rule of Larson and Malone, supra. The power to seize which was granted here had no limitation placed upon it by the Congress, nor did the Court of *623 Appeals bottom its conclusion on a finding of any limitation. Haying plenary power to seize the whole of respondents’ rights in carrying out the congressional mandate, the federal officers a fortiori had authority to seize less. It follows that if any part of respondents’ claimed water rights were invaded it amounted to an interference therewith and a taking thereof — not a trespass.
We find no substance to the contention that respondents were without knowledge of the interference or partial taking. Nor can we accept the view that the absence of specificity as to the amount of water to be taken prevents the assessment of damages in this case. From the very beginning it was recognized that the operation of Friant Dam and its facilities would entail a taking of water rights below the dam. Indeed, it was obvious from the expressed purpose of the construction of the dam — to store and divert to other areas the waters of the San Joaquin — and the intention of the Government to purchase water rights along the river.
6
Pursuant to this announced intention the Government did in fact enter into numerous contracts for water rights, as we have previously noted. While it is true, as the Court of Appeals observed, that the Government did not announce that it was taking water rights to a specified number of “gallons” or, for that matter, “inches” of water, see
It is likely that an element of uncertainty may have been drawn by the Court of Appeals from the Secretary of the Interior’s statement in a letter that the operation of Friant Dam “is an administrative one, voluntarily assumed and voluntarily to be executed.”
Damages in this instance are to be measured by the difference in market value of the respondents’ land before *625 and after the interference or partial taking. As the Supreme Court of California said in Collier v. Merced Irrigation District, supra, at 571-572.
“. . . [T]he riparian right is a part and parcel of the land in a legal sense, yet it is a usufructuary and intangible right inhering therein and neither a partial nor a complete taking produces a disfigurement of the physical property. The only way to measure the injury done by an invasion of this right is to ascertain the depreciation in market value of the physical property. . . . There was a distinct conflict in the evidence as to whether the lands of appellant had a greater or a less market value after the taking by respondent, but there is no question of law arising on the evidence.”
The right claimed here is to the continued flow of water in the San Joaquin and to its use as it flows along the landowner’s property. A seizure of water rights need not necessarily be a physical invasion of land. It may occur upstream, as here. Interference with or partial taking of water rights in the manner it was accomplished here might be analogized to interference or partial taking of air space over land, such as in our recent case of
Griggs
v.
Allegheny County,
In an appropriate proceeding there would be a determination of not only the extent of such a servitude but the value thereof based upon the difference between the value of respondents’ property before and after the taking. Rather than a stoppage of the government project, this is the avenue of redress open to respondents. Since we have set aside the judgments of both the Court of Appeals and the District Court, it is appropriate that we make clear that we do not in any way pass upon or indicate any view regarding the validity of respondents’ water right claims.
V. The Irrigation and Utility Districts.
Similar disposition must be made of No. 115. There the petitioners are 14 Irrigation and Utility Districts which have contracts with thp Government for the use of water from Millerton Lake. The Court of Appeals, as we have noted, dissolved the injunction previously granted against them by the District Court. No other relief having been sought against the Districts, it appears that they should have been dismissed from the action. In any event, in view of our disposition of No. 31, dismissal of these petitioners is now in order.
The judgment as to the dismissal of the United States is affirmed; it is reversed as to the failure to dismiss the Reclamation officials and the Irrigation and Utility Districts, and the cases are remanded to the Court of Appeals with directions that it vacate the judgment of the District Court and remand the case with instructions that the same be dismissed.
It is so ordered.
Notes
A procedure authorized by California law whereby existing rights to the use of water are protected and excess waters are put to beneficial use.
See the Feasibility Report of Secretary Ickes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, dated November 26, 1935, and approved by the President on December 2, 1935, reprinted in
The trial, which lasted more than 200 days, required 30,000 pages of record and produced hundreds of orders. Opinions below are
State
v.
Rank,
The last two sections of the judgment are dealt with in cause No. 51, City of Fresno v. California, decided today, post, p. 627.
43 U. S. C. § 666:
“(a) Consent is given to join the United States as a defendant in any suit (1) for the adjudication of rights to the use of water of a river system or other source, or (2) for the administration of such rights, where it appears that the United States is the owner of or is in the process of acquiring water rights by appropriation under State law, by purchase, by exchange, or otherwise, and the United States is a necessary party to such suit. The United States, when a party to any such suit, shall (1) be deemed to have waived any right to plead that the State laws are inapplicable or that the United States is not amenable thereto by reason of its sovereignty, and (2) shall be subject to the judgments, orders, and decrees of the court having jurisdiction, and may obtain review thereof, in the same manner and to the same extent as a private individual under like circumstances: Provided, That no judgment for costs shall be entered against the United States in any such suit.
“(b) Summons or other process in any such suit shall be served upon the Attorney General or his designated representative.
“(c) Nothing in this section shall be construed as authorizing the joinder of the United States in any suit or controversy in the Supreme Court of the United States involving the right of States to the use of the water of any interstate stream.” July 10, 1952, c. 651, Title II, § 208, 66 Stat. 560.
See note 2, supra.
On March 30, 1953, in response to a request from the district judge that the Secretary clarify his position, a letter was written by the Secretary to the Attorney General expressing his “administrative intent with respect to the operation of the Central Valley project insofar as it relates to the Friant-to-Gravelly Ford reach of the San Joaquin River.” The letter specified that:
“. . . the Department will release from Friant Reservoir into the bed of the river a sufficient quantity of water (1) to meet all valid legal requirements for the reasonable and beneficial use of water, both surface and underground, by reasonable methods of diversion and reasonable methods of use in that area, and (2) to provide, in addition thereto, a continuous live stream flowing at a rate of not less than five cubic feet per second at specified control points throughout the Friant-to-Gravelly Ford area, the last one to be at a point approximately one-half mile below the head of the Gravelly Ford Canal.” Transcript of Record, Vol. VII, p. 388, n. 8.
