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-7- Similar instream flow protection efforts are underway in virtually every other western state.18 Growing societal recognition of the importance of instream flow rights for a host of environmental, recreational, and aesthetic objectives is helping to bring western water law up to date. INTERSTATE ALLOCATION When the States Go to Court While most water conflicts pit individual users against each other, sometimes entire states jump into the fray. In the past, these state versus state conflicts have focused on water supply for agricultural development. The next decade, however, will see more and more interstate battles fought aver water to protect the environment. Indeed, an understanding of interstate water law is becoming essential to the resolution of many wildlife problems. For over a hundred years, the axiom "First in time is first in right" has reigned unchallenged as the central governing principle of western water law. Anyone who doubted the premise was liable to be charged with spreading "riparian socialism". One might think, then, that this historic principle, so carefully enshrined in the prior appropriation doctrine, would govern disputes between states as well as between people. It does not. One of the more curious incongruities in western water law is the attitude of western states toward dividing up the waters of a river that flows through several states. If one applied the prior appropriation doctrine, the water would go to which ever state put it to use first. But it does not work that way. Instead, water is allocated among states by court decrees or negotiated interstate compacts that often ignore which state uses the water first. The law of interstate allocation has arisen entirely in this century. In the 1800s, water resources were not sufficiently developed in western states sharing common rivers to generate any cross-border conflicts." Early in this century, however, depletions in some interstate streams became so severe that states took each other to court to fight over what was left. The first case, Kansas v. Colorado,' was decided in 1907. Kansas sued Colorado charging that extensive irrigation in Colorado was drying up the Arkansas River and restricting the ability of Kansas farmers to launch new irrigation projects. In deciding the case, the Supreme Court had no precedent to gro on; a case like this had never arisen before. The Court noted that the Constitution granted it the authority to resolve disputes between the states, and set out with a clean elate to write a new body of interstate allocation law now known as "equitable apportionment". Had the case arisen today, it is likely that the parties would have documented the environmental consequences of a dried-up Arkansas River. But there was no mention of the environment in 1907. Instead the Court focused its attention on the benefits of irrigated farming. The Court determined that it would be inequitable to "Nevada joined the ranks of those providing full recognition to instream flows with a state supreme court deasion announced last December. State v. Morros, slip op., No. 18105 (Nev., Dec. 21, 1958). New Mexico may be the next state to formally protect instream flows. A coalition of conservation organizations in that state has launched a renewed campaign to enact instream flow legislation. "Curiously, some of the early interstate water conflicts developed not in the parched West, but on the East Coast as major sties tapped the rivers in neighboring states to satisfy their growing populations. ''Kansas v. Colorado, 206 U.S. 46 (190?).