Compacts, Decrees, and Treaties Affecting CO's Water

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extraordinary drought or serious accident) aad up to 1.7 maf per year in years of sutplus on the Colorado River. • Upper Colorado River Compact (1948) In 1948, the Upper Basin states entered into a compact which apportioned among themselves the waters of the Colorado River available to the Upper Basin by the 1922 eolorado River Compact. The 1948 Compact apportioned to Arizona 50,000 acre-feet per year while the other Upper Basin states received a percentage of the remaining apportionment as follows: Colorado . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51.75 % Utah . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23.00 % Wyoming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.00 % New Mexico . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.25% Under this formula, if 7.5 MAF were available to the Upper Basin anuually, Colorado's apportionment would pmvide for the consumptive use of 3,855,375 acre- feet of water annuall.y. The 1948 Compact also provides that consumptive uses under the 1922 La Plata River Compact shall be charged to the apportionments made to the states under Article III of the 1948 Upper Colorado River Compact. It also apportions water between Colorado and Wyoming on the Little Snake River in a manner that gives preference to pre-Compact water rights. Further, it requires that Colorado will not cause the flow of the Yampa River at the Maybell gaging station to be depleted below an aggregate of 5 million acre-feet for any period of ten consecutive years reckoned in a continuing progressive series beginning in 1949, and provides that any of the Upper Basin states may exceed the basic apportionment provided that it does not deprive another state of its apportionment. • Colorado River Storage Project Act (1956) After the ratification of the Upper Colorado River Compact, Congress was receptive to approving this Act which authorized the construction of Glen Canyon, Flaming Gorge, the Aspinall Units (Curecanti), and Navajo dams. This Act also established the Upper Colorado River Basin Fund to wtuch operating revenues would be credited and used to help pay for the projects. The Act further authoriz.ed the investigation and development of several pparticipating projects" specifically aimed at helping the Upper Basin States develop their compact apportioned waters. • Arizona v. California 373 U.S. 546 (1963) Arizona brought suit under the original jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court 3