WSP07342

• File Number: 8200.300.40
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 5/19/1997
• Author: James S. Lochhead
• Title: The Perspective of the State of Colorado in 1922 - Did We get What We Bargained For?
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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Colorado River Compact Symposium
James S. Lochhead
Page 10

The relationship of state and federal authority was one of
the fundamental issues to be addressed in the Compact.
Herbert Hoover explained the Constitutional interests of the
United States in his opening address to the Commission:

The Federal Government is interested through its
control of navigation, through protection of its treaty
obligations, through development of national irrigation
projects and through virtual control of p~~er
development depending upon the use of public lands.

The discussion of federal/state authority also came up
directly toward the end of the negotiations, when Herbert
Hoover raised concerns about an issue then under discussion
of the retained authority of the federal government.
Ottamer Hamele, Chief Counsel of the Reclamation Service,
urged that the Compact contain a general reservation of
rights by the federal government. He asserted that the
Compact was in reality an agreement only among the states,
and that the failure to include a reservation of federal
rights could jeopardize the prospects for ratification by
Congress. When asked by Hoover for an enumeration of the
federal rights, Hamele responded:

Why the federal rights are first, the paramount right
of navigation, which affects flood control. The United
States also has the ownership, I believe, of all of the
unappropriated water if the Basin. It has an interest
in the building of irrigation works under the national
irrigation act. It has rights under the Federal Water
Power Act that possibly don't conflict with anything in
this compact, but there are possibilities that we could
conceive of by which this compact unless they were
reserved. It also has rights in connection with its
treaties with the Indian tribes.

Carpenter, who was almost certainly jumping out of his skin,
immediately asked, "In other words, doesn't amount to this;
that you claim everything except the water that is now
passed as private citizens?" Hamele replied, -~at is
true. ,. Hamele's statement, coming late in the
negotiations, reinforced Carpenter's worst fears.

For years, Colorado had seen far reaching claims of
17 st
1 meeting of the Compact Commission, Washington D.C.,
January 26, 1922.
18 nd
22 meeting of the Compact commission, Santa Fe, New
mexico, November 22, 1922.
rd.