9407

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9407
• Author: Water Education Foundation.
• Title: 75th Anniversary Colorado River Compact Symposium Proceedings.
• USFW Year: 1997.
• USFW - Doc Type: \
• Copyright Material: NO

viewed as a physiographic, economic and social unit.
And it was proposed to provide the equivalent
development of all of its pans. A narrower view
would have concentrated the efforts of the pioneers
upon Salt Lake City and adjacent territory. The
broader view, which accepted and included the
contiguous and tributary domain, has given large and
permanent vitality to the Utah experiment and
settlement. The view of the Colorado River Basin and
tributary territory as one unit is well shown by the
boundaries of the provisional state of Deseret. In
1849, the Utah pioneers formulated a petition to
Congress for the establishment of the state of Deseret
which included roughly the basin of the Colorado
River, including all the territory of the United States
within certain boundaries."
At the time, it appears from the historical
records, Utah had somewhat of a paternalistic
viewpoint towards the Colorado River Basin. As
Anglo-Saxons, they were among the first there and
they wanted to see development proceed. As to the
general issues at hand, based on some limited records,
Utah believed at the time - and I'll quote Mt. R.E.
Caldwell, the Utah state engineer to the commission
- "We have been building individually a great deal on
the statement that has been current and that has been
generally accepted, I believe, that there is enough
water in the river for all of the interests."
Utah also believed that irrigation in the Upper
Basin would result in return flows that would
augment late season flows in the lower reaches of the
river to the benefit of those lower users. This was
based on their experience in such closed basins of
the Great Basin as the Sevier River, and there were
many statements submitted to the commission
supporting this.
However, of a more local nature and of more
importance to Utahans, the development of the
Colorado River for power generation in the Upper
Basin and for irrigation in the Uintah Basin as well as
export of water to the Great Basin were of high
priority. Mr. S.R. Inch, general manager of the Utah
Power and Light Company, stated: "It is certainly
only fair to the state of Utah and to those engaged in
the power industry here that the development of the
power resources of the Green [River] and its tributar-
ies be permitted, provided all other interests were also
properly protected. Such a program of development
will not only be of great assistance to the industrial
centers of the state, but will be one of the greatest
factors in the development of that almost untouched
area in the northeastern part of Utah known as the
Uintah Section."
Furthermore, Utah Power and Light suggested two
reservoir sites as desirable based on rheir preliminary

investigations - Flaming Gorge and Juniper
Mountain. Development of the Green River was
also strongly supported by the local interests in the
Uintah Basin as well as interests in the Salt Lake
Valley. Wesley E. King, representing the Salt Lake
Commercial Club, asked the Commission for
consideration of additional Colorado River water
for use in the Great Basin of Utah: "So we come
if you please and plead with you that out of the
wonderfully bounteous Colorado River you give
us something like 200,000 to 500,000 acre-feet
of water."
The Central Utah Project was a result of this.
Hopefully, we'll be completing that project in the
next few years. However, Utah's main thrust of the
negotiations might be best reflected in Gov. Mabey's
statement to the Commission: "To us, Utah as in
other basin states, there is a natural personal interest.
The river drains 40,000 square miles of our territory.
This means 47 percent of the whole area of the
commonwealth. Whatever happens to this liquid
wealth determines the future of one-half of our

corporate entity.
"Realizing furthermore the futility, the wasteful-
ness and downright folly of litigation, particularly as
experience has taught us in the adjudication of water
rights, it has been
our high hope to
participate in a
movement as would
exclude such
disasters. If some
such understanding
can be worked out
and the people of
Utah believe it can,
you gentlemen will
have been the

Utah believed that

STATES'
PE RS PECTIVES

irrigation in the Upper
Basin would result in

return flows to the

benefit of lower users.

- Robert King

instruments
responsible for one
of the biggest forward steps in statesmanship ever
taken by anybody in this country."
Dr. John Widstoe also exhorted commission
members: " ... The more I have thought about the
matter, rhe more certain I am that this Compact or
agreement or treaty or whatever you may call it must
be a tremendously simple one. The moment it is
made complex, you gentlemen will find that it cannot
be realized. You may agree among yourselves on many
things that the legislatures of this and the other states
will not accept. You must keep this in mind in your
deliberations. Never before has there been such a
magnificent opportunity as that possessed by the
Colorado River commissioners to serve the irrigated
West by reading it a lesson and setting it an example

SYMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS
MAY 1997

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