9337

• UCREFRP Catalog Number: 9337
• Author: Colorado River Water Users Association.
• Title: The Colorado River of Many Returns.
• USFW Year: 2001.
• USFW - Doc Type: Coachella, California.
• Copyright Material: NO

ARIZONA
to adjoining states. Revenue from the electric sales would pay for the
projects and would enable Arizona to abolish state taxes. Colter submitted
the water rights applications to the state of Arizona on behalf of the people
of Arizona. To promote his schemes, he and his allies organized the
Arizona Highline Reclamation Association.
In the ensuing years, while California pressed Congress for
approval of legislation to authorize construction of a large water storage
and power dam on the Colorado River, Arizona, California and Nevada
negotiated unsuccessfully for a division of the river's waters. The Colorado
River Compact had placed the three states in the Lower Colorado River
Basin, leaving to them how they would divide an annual basin entitlement
of 7.5 million acre-feet. Congress seemed to settle that question when it
approved the Boulder Canyon Project Act in December 1928. The law
authorized the Bureau of Reclamation to build Hoover Dam, which stores
Colorado River water and generates hydroelectric power for all the lower
basin states. Hoover Dam made it possible for development of the other
water storage and delivery projects throughout the lower basin, including
the CAP. The act also gave federal approval to the Colorado River
Compact without Arizona's participation, gave Arizona an entitlement to
2.8 million acre-feet of water, California 4.4 million acre-feet, and Nevada
300,000 acre-feet.
Arizona challenged the Boulder Canyon Project Act in court,
with the U.S. Supreme Court deciding in 1931 that Arizona was not
bound by the Boulder Canyon Project Act or the Colorado River
Compact. Further, the court allowed that Arizona could divert water from
the Colorado River above the proposed dam. Colter embraced the
NATURE AT ITS BEST: THE COLORADO RIVER MEANDERING ITS WAY THROUGH THE
SPECTACULAR GRAND CANYON.
decision, maintaining that so long as Arizona did not ratify the Colorado
River Compact, the water appropriations and dam site filings made on
behalf of Arizona were superior.
"Colter's frenzied dedication to his cause won the public mind to
such an extent that championing ratification [of the compact] directly or
indirectly amounted to political suicide for office seekers," Rich Johnson
noted. "He, more than any other one man, set the stage and directed the
players in the tangled controversy that raged for many years between
Arizona and California."
Yet, the continued strong belief that Arizona needed mainstream
Colorado River water to ensure its growth encouraged a more realistic
view. Arizona realized there were many users of the Colorado River and
the state would need to work together with them by ratifying the compact.
If Colter's view had prevailed, passage of the Colorado River Basin Project
Act, which authorized the CAP, may not have come to pass.
Arizonans united under the leadership of Wayne Akin, first
president of the Central Arizona Project Association (CAPA), to achieve
federal authorization of the CAP after their Legislature approved the
compact in 1944. The CAPA, a private, nonprofit organization of
civic leaders formed to educate the public about the importance
of the CAP, coordinated the state's effort regarding Arizona's water
situation. The unanimity among Arizona water users in support of the
CAP was unprecedented.
The belief that sustained growth in Arizona required dependable
supplies of water made available through large water storage and
development projects took root in Arizona in the late 19th century. It was
nourished in 1902 when Congress passed the National Reclamation Act.
That act created the Reclamation Service (today's Bureau of
Reclamation). Using federal funds that would later be paid back by local
water users and through the sale of hydroelectric power, the bureau has
developed water resources management projects throughout the 17
Western states. In concert with the basin states, it has developed the
Colorado River to meet state needs for water and power supplies, protect
and enhance the natural environment and provide unparalleled
recreational opportunities. In Arizona, the Bureau of Reclamation has
been involved in the development of every major water project that affects
the state, from Glen Canyon Dam in the north to the irrigation projects in
the southwest corner.
The first multipurpose federal reclamation project in the nation
was Arizona's Salt River Project (SRP), begun in 1903 and serving
approximately 250,000 acres in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Later,
other public and private water storage and development projects were
planned and built on the Gila, Verde, Agua Fria and Colorado rivers.
Theodore Roosevelt Dam, dedicated by the former president on
March 18, 1911, was the Bureau of Reclamation's flagship dam, successfully
demonstrating water storage and hydroelectric generation. To repay
money advanced by the government for the dam's construction, the Salt
River farmers formed the Salt River Valley Water Users Association (now
SRP) in February 1903. The organization's articles of incorporation,
written by Phoenix attorney Joseph H. Kibbey with assistance from George
H. Maxwell, executive director of the National Irrigation Association,
became the model for water users associations throughout the West.
One of those associations was the Yuma County Water Users
Association. Starting in the 1890s, three private ditch companies
organized in Yuma County to pump water from the Colorado River for
irrigation. In 1904, Congress authorized the Yuma Project. The Bureau of
Reclamation bought the private companies and, in 1906, signed a contract
with the association for construction of Laguna Dam on the Colorado
River, Yuma Main Canal in California and an inverted siphon under the
Colorado River to bring water from the canal to the valley division of the
Yuma Project. Imperial Dam, constructed by the bureau, replaced Laguna
Dam as the diversion point in 1941. 1
Another user of Colorado River water in Yuma County is the
Wellton-Mohawk Irrigation and Drainage District, which was authorized
by the Arizona Legislature on July 23, 1951. The district's origins can be
traced to the 1870s when several thousand acres of Gila River bottom
8
ON MARCH 30, 1909, YUMA, ARIZONA, PARADE AND CELEBRATION OBSERVED
COMPLETION OF LAGUNA DAM.