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15 tl,e dam at Boulder Canyon, one of his main concerns for the signing of a canpact, was: ; . to preserve American rights in the flow of the river. But the whole of this translates itself into some- thing infinitely more important. It translates itself into millions of happy homes for Americans unde~ the blue sJey of the West. 58 '. In the face of the push for American economic prosperity, international agree- ments with a neighPOr such as Mexico would temporarily have to be put on the backburner . ., Even as a strictly domestic agreement, hm,ever, the Colorado River Compact .' was unprecedented in establishing provisions for the prevention of future inter- " s~te conflict over the Colorado instead of perpetuating the trend to"ard , judicial intervention. Carpenter's far-sightedness and Hoover's drive and poli- tical prominence were instrumental to the completion of this in,portant compact. Yet for all of its successes, the Colorado River Compact did have some flaws , that became more evident and more in need of rectification with time. . The estimate used by the negotiators in 1922 of the virgin flow (the flow of a river undepleted by the activities of man)59 at Lee Ferry was overly generous. i \ Part of the reason for this was that the Colorado was in the midst of the wettest , J Wfi-year period in the eighty-seven years for which there are available measure- , ", ments of flow. It was flowing at an average of 18.8 million acre-feet per year at Lee Ferry in the Years before the signing of the Colorado River Compact (1914-1923). The optimism of the negotiators of 1922 was also boosted by the fact that the r~t year 1917 had a virgin flow of 24 million acre-feet at Lee Ferry, unequaled until 1983.60 The allocation in terms of acre-feet would also present problems. It would