WSP12076

• File Number: 8200.300.40.B
• Description: Upper Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/1/1991
• Author: Paul Upsons
• Title: A Leader and Antagonist: Historical Forces Leading to Colorado's Influnce in Meeting Five of the Upper Colorado River Compact Commission ‎(Honors Thesis for U. of Denver History Dept)‎
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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leading up to the watershed compact of 1922, but also as evidence of Colorado's

historically crucial position in western development. Its history played

an important role in determining the course of the proceedings in the 1946

Ccmpact Commission and Colorado's influence within that commission.

Colorado first found itself involved in interstate water litigation in 1901,

accused by Kansas of overusing the waters of the Arkansas River. (The Arkansas
runs from the central mountains of COlorado to Kansas.)30 COlorado contended

that as a sovereign state it had the right to the beneficial consumptive use

of all waters within its boundaries. As the headwaters of the Arkansas are in

Colorado, the defense claimed the right to all such use of the river regardless

of any resultant injury to Kansas.31 This was a most extreme application of the

nile of prior appropriation. According to this rule, the first person who came

to a stream and claimed its water had first priority to exploit it, as it was his

property. This prior right allowed the user to divert the ,rater as far away

from the main stream as desired. 'TIle opposing theory of water rights, the

riparian doctrine.. had its origins in english common lalV. This rule asserted that

only those living along the river's banks could enjoy a part of the flow. Its

implication was that in order to acquire a water right, one had to have a corres-

ponding land right next to the stream. 32

The supporters of prior appropriation rights in the settlement of the

Wast claimed that the arid climate therein demanded a rejection of riparian

principles, as only prior appropriation ,muld accommoclate the vast diversions

for irrigation that were instrumental in settling the West. TIle miners, irrigators,

and other settlers in Colorado subscribed so thoroughly to the principle of prior
appropriation that it became knmm as the "Colorado Doctrine. ,,33 As a sovereign

state adhering to this principle, Colorado claimed in 1901 that it had the right

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to divert as much of the waters of the Arkansas ,>'ithin its borders as it saw fit.

Kansas, however, was primarily a riparian state and asserted that although