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

alarmed by the potential effect of the Lower Basin's rapid
agricultural and municipal-development upon their water use,
fearing they would be preempted by prior water rights
perfected by California and Arizona. This anxiety was
intensified by the Supreme Court's decision in Wvomina
v. Colorado, 259 U.S. 419 (1922), which applied the doctrine
of prior appropriation to apportion the right to use the
water of the Laramie River between Wyoming and Co~orado.
It was clear that because of their enormous cost the

high dam and all-American canal project could only be
undertaken by the Federal Government. It also became clear

that due to opposition from the electrical power industryl0
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and misgivings in other quarters Congressional approval of
the project would depend upon the support, or at least
neutrality, of the other Basin states. These states,
however, were determined to resist the project unless they
received satisfactory assurances of their future use of the

wa ter of the River. Each camp was amenable tOi accommoda-
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tion. In 1921 Conqress authorized Federal partiriPation in

the negotiation of a Compact, see 42 Stat. 171 1(1921), and
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each Basin state quickly appointed a commissiloner.. They
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convened in Washington in January, 1922, elected I the united

States representative, then Secretary of comm~ce Herbert
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Hoover, as their chairman, and spent parts of the Inext eleven
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The Compact divided the entire Colorado Ri~er system,

months in devising a compact.

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