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The Upper Basins' Political Conundrum: A Deal is Not a Deal The leader in defining those interests and in devising a protective strategy was Delph Carpenter of Colorado. ... [HJe had long advocated compacts ... to resolve interstate disputes. Although no states had demonstrated the practicality of his idea by apportioning water among themselves, Carpenter believed that the usual recourse to litigation was a mistake .... His participation in Colorado's lengthy Supreme Court battle ... [in Wyoming v. Colorado) had reinforced these views .... If the states did not put their houses in order, he feared that the federal government might do it for them, thus "weakening ... state autonomy on all rivers." In 1920, ... Carpenter called for a compact covering the Colorado River. It was an idea whose time had come. ... In August 1921 Congress consented to the negotiation of a compact. ... The commissioners [i.e., the negotiators for each state and the United States] spent most of 1922 in fruitless bargaining. ... Finally convinced that they would be unable to settle on a specific volume of water for each state, they decided to concentrate instead on apportioning the river between the upper and lower sections of the basin. But even that decision was more easily reached than implemented. ... Nonetheless, it set the stage for the final round of talks scheduled for November 1922 in New Mexico. Great pressure for a settlement permeated the negotiations which began on November 9 .... Californians were driven by their desire for the ... [Boulder Canyon) Bill, which had been bottled up in Congress by Upper Basin representatives in control of key reclamation committees. Upper Basin leaders feared that if they did not negotiate a water supply for themselves, a disastrous flood on the lower river might stampede Congress into giving Californians the legislation that they wanted. "We simply must use every endeavor to bring about a compact ..., "pleaded Delph Carpenter, "otherwise ... we may never again have a like opportunity. "s' While the negotiations were in fact completed that month, the stage had only been set for years, nay decades, of litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court and of political wrangling in the legislative forum of Congress. 37 Handley, supra note 34, at 14-17. Footnotes omitted. Extensive histories of the negotiation of the Colorado River Compact may be found in R. OLSON, THE COLORADO RIVER COMPACT (1926) (thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University, and published by the author; copy available in the library of the Upper Colorado River Commission, Salt Lake City, Utah); and N. HUNDLEY, WATER AND THE WEST: THE COLORADO RIVER COMPACT AND THE POLITICS OF WATER IN THE AMERICAN WEST (1975). 16 r t C] 1 C