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Show COLORADO RIVER LITIGATION 559 Pursuant to this congressional authority, the seven States appointed Commissioners who, after negotiating for the better part of a year, reached an agreement at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on November 24,1922. The agreement, known as the Colorado River Compact,20 failed to fulfill the hope of Congress that the States would themselves agree on each State's share of the water. The most the Commissioners were able to accomplish in the Compact was to adopt a compromise sugges- tion of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, specially designated as United States representative.21 This compromise divides the entire basin into two parts, the Upper Basin and the Lower Basin, separated at a point on the river in northern Arizona known as Lee Ferry. (A map showing the two basins and other points of interest in this con- troversy is printed as an Appendix facing p. 602.) Article III (a) of the Compact apportions to each basin in perpetuity 7,500,000 acre-feet of water22 a year from the Colorado River System, defined in Article II (a) as "the Colorado River and its tributaries within the United States of America." In addition, Article III (b) gives the Lower Basin "the right to increase its beneficial consumptive use23 of such waters by one million acre-feet per annum." Article III(c) provides that future Mexican water rights recognized by the United States shall be supplied first out of surplus over and above the aggregate of the quan- tities specified in (a) and (b), and if this surplus is not enough the deficiency shall be borne equally by the two basins. Article III(d) requires the Upper Basin not to deplete the Lee Ferry flow below an aggregate of 75,000,000 acre-feet for any 10 consecutive years. Article III(f) and (g) provide a way for further apportionment by a com- pact of "Colorado River System" waters at any time after October 1, 1968. While these allocations quieted rivalries between the Upper and Lower Basins, major differences between the States in the Lower Basin continued. Failure of the Compact to determine each State's share of the water left Nevada and Arizona with their fears that the law of prior appropriation would be not a protection but a menace because California could use that law7 to get for herself the lion's share of the waters allotted to the Lower Basin. Moreover, Arizona, because of her particularly strong interest in the Gila, intensely resented the Com- pact's inclusion of the Colorado River tributaries in its allocation scheme and was bitterly hostile to having Arizona tributaries, again particularly the Gila, forced to contribute to the Mexican burden. Largely for these reasons, Arizona alone, of all the States in both basins, refused to ratify the Compact.24 Seeking means which would permit ratification by all seven basin States, the Governors of those States met at Denver in 1925 and again in 1927. As a result of these meetings the Governors of the upper States suggested, as a fair apportionment of water among the Lower Basin States, that out of the average annual delivery of water at Lee 20The Compact can be found at 70 Cong. Rec. 324 (1928), and U.S. Dept. of Interior. Documents on the Use and Control of the Waters of Interstate and International Streams 39 (1956). 21 H.R. Doc. No. 717, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. 22 (1948). 22 An acre-foot of water is enough to cover an acre of land with one foot of water. 23 "Beneficial consumptive use" means consumptive use measured by diversions less return flows, for a beneficial (nonwasteful) purpose. 2* Arizona did ratify the Compact in 1944, after it had already become effective by six- state ratification as permitted by the Boulder Canyon Project Act. |