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<br />Where Carpenter's broad application of equitable apportionment is <br />most visible is in his ability to persuade Hoover and the other <br />commissioners that instead of apportioning the water on a state-by-state <br />basis, using maximum irrigable acreage as the unit of measurement, the <br />river had to be considered in its entirety so that the special needs of <br />the headwaters states for time to develop could be integrated in a plan <br />which also recognized the special needs of the lower basin for flood <br />control and power. Division of the river at Lee's Ferry and <br />apportionment of ~ater on a fifty-fifty basis between upper and lower <br />basins represents the apogee of Carpenter's intellectual creativity. It <br />is a l~gacy of equitable apportionment. <br />Constitutionalist and student of international law, Carpenter <br />constructed his plan on a solid legal foundation. He spoke frequently <br />about Article I, Section 10, paragraph 3 of the Constitution which <br />allows states to enter into treaties with Congress' consent. All <br />states, he pronounced, were on equal footing. They had surrendered <br />their right to bear arms against each other and replaced war with the <br />right to litigate in the Supreme Court. Compacts or treaties, already <br />negotiated between states over boundary disputes, fisheries, harbor <br />rights and other conflicts had proven more productive policy than <br />litigation. The situation on the Colorado River among seven states and <br />the United States, he reasoned, was very similar to the role of nations <br />with international rivers. Compacts were "nothing more than the <br /> <br />application of the rule of international law <br />exhausted before there is a recourse to arms <br /> <br />. diplomacy must be <br /> <br />.- <br /> <br />or, in the case of <br /> <br />the states, before there is a recourse to lawsuits. Just as headwater <br />nations in international law had a certain Minherent privilege to <br />benefi~s that might be denied the lower nation," basin of origin states <br />on the'Colorado River, which agreed to a system of sharing the river <br />through equitable apportionment, should be guaranteed enough time to <br />develop withou~ being compelled to deliver unreasonable amounts of water <br />from the headwaters to projects in the lower basin. As Carpenter put <br />it, if basin of orig~n states were forced to yield unrealistic flows <br /> <br />12 <br />