WSPC01380 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

003111 the principle of equitable Page 10 division, in recognition of the likelihood that application of the doctrine of prior appropriation would allocate most of the river's water to the more rapidly developing states of the Lower Basin. It provides that the Upper Basin must deliver to the Lower Basin a ten-year moving average of 7.5 million acre-feet plus, if necessary, a share of the Mexican treaty obligation (which was later determined to be 1.5 million acre-feet annually). Under the 1922 compact, the Upper Basin is also prohibited from withholding water from the Lower Basin for non-consumptive purposes, i.e., hydropower generation. Similarly, the Lower Basin is prohibited from calling water down strictly for hydropower or other non-consumptive purposes. (This article of the 1922 compact may have been modified by the 1968 Colorado River Basin Project Act providing, among other things, for the development of ~ hydropower at Glen Canyon Dam.) Many aspects of the 1922 compact are open to varying interpretation, and each basin state has held that the interpretation most favorable to it is the proper one. For a discussion of these ambiguities and possible interpretations, see Meyers (1966). The price of Lower Basin (or, ~ more accurately, California) accession to the terms of the 1922 compact was federal construction of Boulder (later Hoover) Dam and Lake Mead, which stores water for delivery to the Lower Basin. The second of the institutional features which modifies or replaces the principle of prior appropriation in interstate water allocation in the Colorado Basin is the Upper Colorado River Compact of 1948. This compact allocates the (unspecified) quantity of Colorado River water assigned to the Upper Basin by the 1922 compact among the states of the Upper Basin by percentage, except that Arizona's share is a fixed 50,000 acre-feet annually. Those percentages are: Colorado New Mexico Utah Wyoming 51.75% 12.25% 23.00% 14.00%