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<br />suffered for the rest of his life with what was finally diagnosed as <br />Parkinson's disease. Over the next ten years, a shaky signature and <br />frequent references to his health testify to Carpenter's mental and <br />physical courage during the most productive years of his life. <br />In retrospect, the 1922 decision in Wvomjna v. Colorado, <br />recognizing prior appropriation as the determining factor in allocating <br />Laramie River water between the two states, seems to have clinched his <br />views in favor of the need to pursue interstate river compacts based on <br />equitable apportionment. The Court's opinion restricted the amount of <br />water that Colorado could take out of the Laramie River basin to less <br />than zq,ooo acre-feet. Consequently, the Greeley-Poudre irrigation <br />project crashed along with the spirits of those who believed that <br />Colorado held absolute dominion over its own water. Bond holders from <br />allover the world took a beating and the future of irrigated <br />agriculture in the West appea"red threatened. IS <br />While claiming that he foresaw the Court's decision, Carpenter was <br />shocked when it became public. "The doctrine so announced," he said, <br />"leaves the western states to a rivalry and a contest of speed for <br />further development." Unless the compact method could be made <br />acceptable, upper basin states would have only one alternative: to use <br />every means available to retard development in the lower states until <br />water uses at the headwaters reached their maximum. ~6 Such action would <br />be the equivalent of war between states, just what Carpenter hoped to <br />avo,id. He was angry at Wyoming. They had "suicided [sic] and <br />incidentally half murdered all the other states of origin." The <br />decision was a "disaster and the pity of it all" wrote Carpenter His <br />that he [Chief Justice Willis Van Devanter] did not need to have done so <br />in order to have afforded Wyoming ample protection."17 Carpenter also <br />worried about what Kansas would do on the Arkansas River, surmising that <br />the Wyoming decision gave strength to those who favored litigation over <br />negotiated settlements. L8 <br />As time passed, however, Carpenter began to make a virtue out of <br />what he had first termed a disaster. The Court had validated the <br /> <br />8 <br />