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DIVIDING
THE WATER: THE LAW OF THE RIVER
Can you own flowing
water?
Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover presides
over the signing of the Colorado River Compact,
Bishop's Lodge, outside Santa Fe, New Mexico,
November 1922.
Courtesy of U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.
Notions
of who was able to do what with water did much to shape the development
of the American West in the 19th century. "First in time, first
in right" and "use it or lose it "became codified in laws that transformed
both people and place.
In 1922 representatives
from seven western states met to negotiate how to divide the water among
the states. The resulting Colorado River Compact divided the river into
the Upper and Lower Basins. Native Americans were excluded from the meeting,
but the earlier 1908 Winters decision protects water rights on their reserved
lands. Mexicans were also excluded from the meeting, but the Mexican Water
Treaty of 1944 guarantees their rights as well.
The legal and administrative
agreements and treaties about the Colorado River water are collectively
called the Law of the River. Over the last 80 years the Law of the River
has expanded to reflect our changing environmental, moral, legal, and
cultural concerns and values, as well as changing demographics.
The
river allotments are 16.5 million acre feet per year.Over
the last 100 years the average flow of the river is 15 million
acre feet per year; high flows of 17 million acre feet occurred
in 1896-1930 and again in the late 1980s; low flows of 13
million acre feet occurred 1930-1978.
The
total river allotments are 16.5 million acre feet.
Lower Basin states have a prior right to a volume of water
equal to 7.5 million acre feet per year, or 75 million
acre feet over 10 years.
Upper
Basin states have to meet the obligation to provide 7.5
million acre feet to Lower Basin states and then get allocated
water on a percentage basis, except for Arizona, which
has a small portion of land in the Upper Basin and receives
a flat grant of 50,000 acre feet a year for that.
Total
Allocated =16,500,000
"I
tell you gentlemen you are piling up a heritage of conflict
and litigation over the water rights for there is no
sufficient water to supply the land."
John
Wesley Powell speaking before International Irrigation
Congress, 1893
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"The
Canyon Ditch is the first diversion of water from the Green River.
It is the highest man-made interference with the natural flow of
the Colorado River system and thus of great, although virtually
unnoticed, significance to the seven states in the watershed. From
the headgate of the ditch, it is almost 1,700 miles to the last
diversion of water from the river - the headgate of a similarly
unlined ditch the Mexicans have dug through the sands of the delta
to divert the last flow of the river north into Laguna Salada.
Between
these two ditches, dug with the same knowledge available to ancients
- that water runs safely downhill if the incline is steady but slight
- is gathered the most technically complex assemblage of waterworks
in the world, run by such complex gadgetry as computers and laser
beams and all girdled by a dense network of treaties, laws, and
administrative decisions of such talmudic proportions that they
are known only to a few."
Philip
L. Fradkin, A River No More, 1981
Time
line of major legislation:
Colorado
River Compact 1922
Boulder
Canyon Project Act 1928
California
Seven-Party Agreement of 1931
California
Water Delivery Contracts
Mexican
Water Treaty of 1944
Upper Basin
Compact of 1948
Colorado
River Storage Project Act of 1956
Supreme
Court Opinion, Decree of 1963-64 and Supplemental Decrees
Colorado
River Basin Project Act of 1968
Colorado
River Basin Salinity Control Act of 1974
Reclamation
Reform Act of 1982
Grand Canyon
Protection Act of 1992
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