9367 ‎(3)‎

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9367
• Author: Colorado Water Workshop.
• Title: Proceedings
• USFW Year: 1992.
• USFW - Doc Type: Colorado Water Workshop July 22-24, 1992.
• Copyright Material: NO

law of the river, has developed to govern the River and
allocate its water among the Colorado Basin.states and
between the United states and Mexico. The cornerstone of

the law of the river, the Colorado River Compact of 1922,
materialized principally as a result of fear of a recurrence
of floods that devastated parts of the lower River in 1905-07
and again in 1916. Ironically, though, the condition which
has most troubled the law of the River since its inception
has been the opposite problem: insufficient quantities of
water.

Despite the apparent intentions of the framers of the
1922 Compact, the burden of these deficiencies is often
assumed to fall largely on the states of the Upper Basin. As
the director of Colorado's natural resources department
recently assessed this predicament, "The ultimate f'roblem for
the Upper Basin is how to build a future on t~e riqht to
leftovers."7 Perhaps, however, the more pertinent and
fundamental question is really whether the Upper Basin should
have to build its future on the right to leftove+s, instead
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of an equal portion of this common resource. Tht objective
of this paper is to explore briefly the salient teatures of
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the law of the River ahd survey the prospects fori correcting
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its most glaring inequities.

A.

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The Colorado River Compact of 1922

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II.

THE PRINCIPAL PARTS OF Tim LAW OF THE RIVER

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