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<br />25 <br /> <br />continued in Meeting Five, where Commissioner Bishop of Wyoming made obvious <br /> <br />his state's desire for a quick ratification of a strong compact that would limit <br /> <br />Colorado's ability to monopolize the river. TIle history of Supreme Court disputes <br /> <br />between Wyoming and Colorado were not, however, over the Colorado River, but <br /> <br />concerned the Laramie RIver, another interstate stream. <br /> <br />The Laramie has its source in the mountains of northern Colorado and flows <br /> <br />f "h' C d b f 'w' 81 <br />or twenty-seven mlles Wlt ln olora 0 e ore enterlng yomlng. <br /> <br />Wyoming first <br /> <br />brought Colorado to court over the latter's use of the Laramie in 1911, with <br /> <br />the final judgement given in 1922. Wyoming charged the state of Colorado and <br /> <br />two of its corporations with proposing to divert a dangerously large amount of <br /> <br />water from the Laramie River to another watershed, the Cache La Poudre Valley, <br /> <br />by means of a Laramie-poudre Tunnel.82 Wyoming claimed that this would injure <br /> <br />the irrigators in Wyoming's Laramie Valley. <br /> <br />Wyoming's claims were based on two grounds. The first was that Colorado could <br /> <br />not take the waters of an interstate stream and use them in another watershed <br /> <br />where Wyoming irrigators could never receive any benefit from them. (The benefit <br /> <br />referred to in this case most likely means the return flow: the water that is <br /> <br />used to irrigate land near a stream that eventually percolates through the ground <br />. 83 <br />and finds its way back to the stream.) If the Court agreed with Wyoming on <br /> <br />this point, it would mean that virtually all of the major Colorado diversions of <br /> <br />the Laramie would have to be shut down; all were transmountain diversions to <br /> <br />another watershed where Wyoming would not receive the benefit of any return flOW.84 <br /> <br />the second claim of Wyoming was that its irrigators had established prior rights <br /> <br />to the Laramie before the Laramie-Poudre Tunnel was constructed and put to use. <br /> <br />According to the text of the opinion of the Court, Colorado argued as it did <br /> <br />in 1907 against Kansas that it could use any or all of the river's waters within <br /> <br />its borders regardless of resultant injuries to Wyoming. Tile defense further <br /> <br />maintained that Wyoming would still receive enough water to satiSfy its approp- <br /> <br />- <br />