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History It was 1922. In Washington, D.c., the Supreme Court unanimously upholds women's right to vote under the 19th Amendment, the u.S. Senate begins its first inquiries into what would become the Teapot Dome scandal and two California congressmen introduce the "Swing-Johnson Bill," better known as the Boulder Canyon Project Act. For the other six states within the Colorado River Basin, the latter development was another in the long Then and now. Top, Commissioners at the 1922 signing of the Colorado River Compact. Seated is Herbert Hoover. Bottom, the seven states' representatives at the Foundation's 75th anniversary symposium. 6 list of southern California's dominance in population, water development and irrigated farmland. They, too, wanted large water projects for irrigation and hydroelectric power, and they feared that under the appropriative rights doctrine of water law that a dam at Boulder Canyon would give California prior right to the lion's share of the water. When the bill was introduced, the states' representatives already were meeting with Hoover to negotiate an agreement among themselves. Those talks, which had begun in January 1922, had not been very fruitful to that point. By November, however, the mood had changed. Much of that was because Colorado representative Delph Carpenter had won support for an allocation of water between two basins rather than among the seven states. "When all is said and done, it was Carpenter to whom all of them paid tribute for his steady hand in 1922," said Professor Tyler. "I know of no one who worked with 'the Silver Fox of the Rockies' who did not learn to admire the originality of his thinking, the exhaustive nature of his research, the courage of his convictions, and his insistence on what he called 'comity' - the need for courtesy and respect when negotiating among equals." Today, it is generally accepted that the river is oversubscribed. One big reason for the disparity is the data upon which the compact and its supply yields were based. According to Tyler, the negotiators based their allocation and a plan to apportion the surplus in 40 years (Article IIl(9)(f)) on the mistaken belief that the river's yield was 20 million to 21 million acre-feet; actual annual flow is closer to 15 million acre-feet. There also is some evidence that the states exaggerated estimates of the amount of land that could be irrigated in order to gain more water. Going into the negotiations, the upper basin states, Wyoming, Colo- rado, Utah and New Mexico, were fairly united in their main concern - to retain sufficient water upstream to allow for future development. "We wanted protection for our existing uses," said Tom Turney, state engineer of New Mexico. "But we also wanted protection of the water for future development, and we felt that the compact was the only way to secure that protection." Each lower basin state, however, had its own goal. California wanted a dam on the lower Colorado River for flood protec- tion and hydropower production and an all-American Canal (that didn't go through Mexico) for the Imperial Valley. "It was apparent that the states recognized they had to make peace among themselves before Congress would go forward and authorize this huge federal project and allow these purposes to be met," said David Kennedy, director of the California Department of Water Resources. Nevada also was interested in power production. It supported Western Water