OCR Text |
Show THE WESTERN WEB 19 successfully, and growing communities were to be supplied. The first question was: How was the water of the river to be divided? It was in 1921 that representatives from the seven basin states finally sat down together to work out a compact to govern the entire Colorado River system. The Federal Government took part. Herbert Hoover, then Secretary of Commerce, became chairman of the Colorado River Commission. For nearly eleven months the commissioners talked, wrangled and finally came to terms. In Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 24, 1922, the Colorado River Compact, the basic law of the river, was signed. It was an historic day, memorable in the annals of western development, and especially a vital milestone in the advancement of western reclamation. But as remedial and progressive as the compact was, it did not bring peace to the Colorado River. Quite to the contrary, it established an arena for the water war that was to rage for the next forty years, and, as this is written, is far from ended. The original Colorado River Compact divided the river into two sections, an upper and a lower basin, and apportioned waters to each basin. It left to the respective states of each basin the task of dividing their share of the river among themselves. In the Lower Basin, composed of the states of Ari- zona, Nevada and California, the controversy over division of the waters apportioned to them proceeded with constantly mounting intensity. Only in 1949, more than a quarter century after the Compact was signed, were the states of the Upper |