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o ....... C': N ( C The Central Arizona Project Background of the CAP Central Arizona residents talked about using Colorado River water "to bring the great desert under cultivation" more than a century ago. The idea was labeled" chimerical" - a fantasy, the product of unfettered imagination - by a Phoenix newspaper editor in 1886. Still, the thought persisted, and was revived when Salt River Valley farmers and business- men met in 1900 to consider ways to overcome the periodic droughts that afflicted the land. Their efforts, joined with those of irrigationists in other western territories and states, prompted the U.s. Congress to approve the National Irrigation (or Reclamation) Act in 1902. The law authorized the U.S. Department of the Interior to provide financial and technical assistance for the reclamation of western arid and semiarid lands, including those in private ownership. This would be accomplished through construction of dams, reservoirs, canals and related works. Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, some 60 miles northeast of Phoenix, was among the first projects built by the U.s. Reclamation Service (now the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation). Completed in 1911, it was the nation's first multi-purpose dam, successfully providing water storage for irrigation and for the development of electricity. One irony of its success was furnishing inexpensive electricity to pump large quantities of groundwater for additional irrigation. Led by California and Arizona, the seven states of the Colorado River Basin - Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming - joined in 1919 to begin promoting development of the Colorado River. In 1921, Congress authorized the states to draft an agreement dividing the Colorado River's waters. Negotiators signed the Colorado River Compact at Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Nov. 24, 1922, and sent it for ratification by the legislature of each state and by Congress. Approval was given by all the states except Arizona. Some of the state's political leaders argued that, because almost half the total length of the river flowed inside the state or along its western border, Arizona should be allowed to use all the water it wanted. This position was contested bitterly within the state, and ratification of the compact was delayed until February 1944. Meanwhile, Congress approved the Boulder Canyon Project Act in 1928. This act authorized construction of Hoover Dam (completed in 1935) in Boulder Canyon on the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada. It also allotted annually from the river 2.8 million acre-feet (maf) of water to Arizona, 4.4 maf to California and 300,000 acre-feet (af) to Nevada, The next year, California passed a law limiting itself to 4,4 maf annually. 9