WSP03626

• File Number: 8200.300.40.A
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/30/1922
• Author: Co. R Compact Comm.
• Title: Minutes of Colorado Compact Commission - Meeting #7
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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alone would not control. Acreage, volume and other factors and

conditions that would have a bearing upon interstate justice

should enter into the application of the rule of equitable appor-

tionment. I might say that no two rivers would call for'the same

treatment. Hhat would be a reasonable exercise in one case might

be unreasonable in another. For instance, if one State wantonly

dostroyed and put her water to useless waste, that might be con-

sidered an unreasonable exercise of sovereignty. But to supply

the 1dater necessary for her inhabitants is her first right and her

first duty as a state. I might say more: the lower state has full

notice of the ultimate rights of the upper, and, if enormous di-

versions were permitted by a state on the lm<1er river, without a due

consideration of the conditions that ;lould later obtain in the

upper State, that lower river state should not later come in and

claim that, because she had built her works, she had thereby put

herself in a position to lay hold of the territorial waters of

the upper irrespective of the present or future necessities of

the upper state and.her people.

11R. HOOVER: In other words, she would claim the priority of

utilization? Then it comes to this: The Upper states want to be

declared immune by the other States from litigation,

MR. CARPENTER: He do not feel, speaking for my own State, that

'we are asking quite that much. We take this position, as stated

in my memorandum, that by reason of the fact that we furnish the

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