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

basin, that there is a question as to whether these
reservoirs are going to fluctuate the way that the
original negotiators perhaps contemplated that they
would fluctuate. They were right in the middle of the
reclamation era, the dawn of the great projects that
were developed in the Colorado River Basin and they
were still in the view of settling the West. Their water
needs were based on all this irrigation that would be
created as a result of these projects. The reality in the
future clearly will be something different.
What we now face, of course, is a situation in
which the Lower Basin has reached its limit in its use
of water out of the main stem. We would argue that
it has exceeded its limit out of the tributaries, but
that's a different issue. And the Upper Basin has the
real concern that we had in 1922 - that over-use will
ripen into an entitlement to excess water - so we are
putring off that day of reckoning about when we
ultimately have to meet a delivery obligation and are
concentrating our efforts on asserting our perpetual
rights under the Compact and the limitations that
the Lower Basin has.

STATES'
PERSPECTIVES

QUESTION FROM TIlE AUDIENCE: Do you
see the federal government, in order to consolidate
our friendship with Mexico, allowing the Colorado
River to drain into the Gulf!

Muvs: I think that's another panel. But I know
California is concerned about the implications of the
Department of State trying to sweeten up negotia-
tions on other issues with water. That's a perennial
problem. .

SYMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS
MAy 1997

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