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

MODERATOR:

ELIZABETH ANN "BETSY" RIEKE,

DIRECTOR, NATURAL REsOURCES LAw

CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO

Our panel is entitled "Federal and State Issues
Mter the Compact: Then and Now." I think you can
guess that you're going to get different perspectives,
depending on where these people sit in the federal
system. You will get different perspectives depending
on where they sit geographically - Upper or Lower
Basin. We saw a little Upper and Lower Basin
disputes - potential disputes - in the last panel. The
perspective on the federal and state issues also varies
over time, and we will hear that from some of our
panelists.

SYMPOSIUM
PROCEEDINGS
MAY 1997

JOHN LESHY, SOLICITOR,

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

That was a great first panel. This is where Mo
Udall's line about "Everything's been said, but not
everybody's said it" seems appropriate. Given Mr.

o

Panelists: Mike Clinton, Imperial Irrigation
District; Moderator, Betsy Rieke, University
of Colorado School of Law; John Leshy, us.
Department of the Interior; Charley Calhoun,
us. Bureau of Reclamation, Upper Basin;
wayne Cook, Upper Colorado River
Commission; and Lisa Jackson, chief of staff
Arizona Rep. Bob Stump.

Bannister's description of Delph Carpenter as having
this fanatical hatred of the federal government,
bordering on paranoia - you all remember Woody
Allen's line, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't
mean they're not out to get you." Or William
Burroughs' line about "A paranoid is somebody who
knows a little of what's going on."
I'm not the federal representative here, Charley
[Calhoun] is. I'm a law professor who actually is
temporarily on leave at the Department of the
Interior. I'm going to be professorial this morning
and try to touch on many of the themes that have
already been sounded to identify a number of the
state-federal issues.
It was pretty clear, especially because of
Carpenter's influence, that the working assumption of
the drafters of the Compact was that state law would
generally control the allocation of water within the
borders of the states under the Compact arrange-
ment. Nevertheless, I think it's useful to think of the
Compact as a kind of a constitution. It's a very broad
framework of principles that, like constitutions,