WSP04958

• File Number: 8200.300.40
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 8/1/1997
• Author: Daniel Tyler
• Title: Delpheus Emory Carpenter and the Colorado River Compact of 1922
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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compact for the states to ratify, followed by congressional approval of the
compact was, for Carpenter, the preferred modus operandi.
Carpenter's arguments in support of the constitutionality of interstate
compacts focused on the preservation of state sovereignty. His reasoning
resulted not only from the training he received as an attorney and his interest
in constitutional history but from his frustrating experiences with Royce
Tipton in the San Luis Valley. Colorado's legitimate irrigation projects along
the Rio Grande were prohibited because of the federal government's concern
about meeting treaty obligations with Mexico.
In 1896 the United States and Mexico began discussions respecting the
use of water of the Rio Grande at EI Paso. As a result of these conversations,
the Secretary of State recommended that the Secretary of the Interior "suspend
operation of the act of 1891 known as 'the right-of-way act,' under which
easements must be secured for the construction of irrigation works over public
lands. . . . In harmony with this recommendation the Secretary of the Interior
entered what was known as 'the embargo order,' whereby the Commissioner
General of the Land Office was directed to approve no more filings under the
act of 189 I until further orders." As Carpenter noted in hearings before the
United States Senate in 1925,8 "[t]he effect of that order was just as though an
army had been placed in that territory to prevent construction activities. No
building was allowed." Following a treaty with Mexico in 1906, the order was
modified allowing reservoir construction, but all projects commenced after
I 903 remained embargoed. In its "bureaucratic spirit of super caution,"
Carpenter concluded, the Department of the Interior declined to lift the
embargo until I 925, even though "scientific investigations" and "engineering
studies" showed that the waters of the Rio Grande were ample to supply the
needs of both the United States and Mexico and that, indeed, surplus water