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THE FIRST 50 YEARS the inevitability was impossible to ignore. So the CRWUA representatives concentrated on attaching amendments that would afford protection to water users. With the aid of a few senators who were sympathetic to their concerns, they were successful in securing the inclusion of 11 amendments. The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty by a 76-to-10 vote April 18, 1945, six days after the death of President Roosevelt, perhaps partly as a validation of his Good Neighbor policy. It set the quantity of the water apportioned to Mexico for its use at 1.5 million acre-feet. But it was ambiguous about the quality - an omission that would come to haunt the United States neighbor in years to come. Negotiators from both sides reported different interpretations to their respective senates. The United States claimed Mexico fully understood that it was to accept whatever quality water that flowed across the border, even water not usable for irrigation. Mexicans reported that the water they received would be at least of the same quality as that used by California's Imperial Irrigation District. It widely has been assumed that the issue deliberately was left unclear in an effort to hasten ratification. Interestingly, the proceedings and hearings in Mexico, prior to ratification by that republic, confirmed that engineering and legal witnesses testifying before the Mexican Senate openly considered it a trade of 375,000 acre-feet on the Rio Grande for 1.5 million acre-feet on the Colorado and that they felt Mexico needed the treaty and the United States did not. According to first CRWUA President Smith, Mexico, aware that its irrigable or reclaimable lands had been greatly overestimated by U.S. engineers, determined not to arbitrate some points that weren't satisfactory or clear to that country for fear that the United States would react unfavorably if the treaty were opened again. When the dust had cleared, the newly formed association could take pride on two fronts: Without its success in obtaining amendments, the terms of the treaty could have been much worse for Colorado River water users, and it had succeeded in unifying often-battling representatives from seven states, providing them with a vehicle through which they could address issues upon which they all agreed. In the years to follow, CRWUA urged the seven basin states to negotiate and conclude subcompacts apportioning the river ... fought an early battle against the formation of valley authorities such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, labeling them "totalitarian" and "un-American" ... consistently supported state water laws over federal water laws to govern waters within a state ... worked toward a policy declaration making delivery of Mexico's treaty-allocated water a responsibility of the nation as a whole .., pushed for reclamation law reform, water quality standards for the basin states and salinity control ... took a tough stand on the quality of the water to be delivered to Mexico . took strong positions on groundwater protection and management, Clean Water Act amendments, Safe Drinking Water Act amendments, Indian trust representation and Indian reserved water rights, wild and scenic rivers, the Endangered Species Act, wilderness areas, water conservation, instream flows, small projects program, cost sharing, wetlands - the list goes on. Each year at its annual meetings, the group adopts as many as 45 to 50 resolutions on a wide variety of water issues. After that first meeting in Las Vegas, the association has met only five times outside that centrally located city. Its early members have seen a transformation there that few could, or would, have predicted. Ten different hotels have been host to the water users' gatherings, 19 of them at Caesar's Palace, a record. These gatherings provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and information, spotlight presentations on issues of vital importance to the members and feature the foremost experts in their fields. Contacts and relationships are made that prove of great value throughout the years. The association's public affairs committee, operating under a series of titles over the 50 years, produces informational materials that are distributed in Washington, D.C., in state capitals, at schools and service clubs, through community relations activities, on tours and wherever else the member states find them of value. These have included an award- winning film titled "The Colorado: Portrait of a River," numerous brochures, a calendar detailing uses of the river and an eye-catching, bright yellow file folder designed to stand out in any file drawer. Labeled "Colorado River Profiles," the latter includes information on some 18 aspects of the river's operations and uses. In 1995, the association's 50th anniversary, the Colorado River Water Users Association is precisely what Alan Bible, Al Smith, Perry Jenkins, A.J. Shaver and Arizona's D.W. Sexton and Victor I. Corbell, California's Evan T. Hewes, and Utah's Fisher Harris and Chauncey Sandberg - all original board members - envisioned it would be. As Smith had described, it would be "a body that would truly reflect and work for [the water users'] rights and privileges, a body that would be free from any political connection, one that would and could be guided by engineering, historical and legal facts, that could elect directors to represent them and not be responsible to and subservient to state or national administrations or political groups, an association more truly representative of needs than the Committee of Fourteen, which had violated the very object for which it was ostensibly created." Compiled and written and JoAnn Lundgren, consultant, former senior assistant director of public affairs, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, and chairman, CRWUA public affairs committee. 5 SITE OF THE ORGANIZING MEETING OF CRWUA -- THE LAST FRONTIER HOTEL, LAS VEGAS, NEVADA, CIRCA 1945.