WSP07699

• File Number: 8200.300.40.A
• Description: Colorado River Compact
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 6/1/1921
• Author: Delph E. Carpenter
• Title: Report and Supplemental Report of Delph E. Carpenter, Commissioner for Colorado on the Colorado River Commission in RE: Colorado River Compact
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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lands within its bordel's, including the beds of streams and other
waters. (Oiting cases). * * * It may determine for itself whether
the common law rule in respect to riparian rights or that doc.
trine which obtains in the arid regions of the West of the appro-
priation of waters for the purposes of irrigation shall control.
Oongress can not enforce either rule upon any State. * * * One
cardinal rule, underlying all the relations of the States to each
other, is that of tile equality of right, E'ach State stands on
the same level with all the rest. It can impose its own legisla~
tion on no one of the others, and is bound to yield its own views
to none," (Kansas v. Oolorado, 206 U, S" 46, 87-97,)

In concluding the above decision, the Supreme Oourt dis-
missed the case without prejndice to the right of Kansas to
institute new proceedings, "whenever it shall apear that through
a ma terial increase in the depletion of the waters of the Arkansas
by Colorado' . . the substantial interests of Kansas are being
iljjured to the extent of destroying the equitable apportionment
of the benefits between the two States resulting from tile fiow of
the river," (206 U, S" 46, 117,)

'fhe United States has large interests in the form of public
lands within the Oolorado River area; and has already constructed
large irrigation works near Yuma, Arizl., and is enga:ged in irri-
gation of large areas along the lower portion of the stream and
in the vicintv of the Salton Sea, The seven Oolorado Hiver States
have already enacted legislation authorizing a commissioner for
each of the States, to meet with a representative of the United
States, fOl' the purpose of formulating and entering into a com-
pact 01' agreement respecting the future utilizatiou and disposi-
tion of the waters of the Oolorado River and its tributarIes, Any
such compa:ct will be of no binding force or effect until ratified
by the legislatures of each of the States and by the Oongl'Css of
the United States, The seven State sovereignties have legislated,
. The governor of each has appoiuted a commissioner pursuant to
the legislation, The governors have collectively waited upon the
President and presented their written request for national legis-
lation authorizing the appointment by the President of a repre-
sentative for the United States,

(Note: Since the foregoing mcmorandum was written the
U, S, Supreme Court decided, in Wyoming v. Colorado, that in
cases between two States both of which recognize the doctrine of
prior appropriation as a matter of local law, the Oourt will apply
the fundamental principles of the doctrine in the allocation of
the waters of a river common to the two States and will so
apportion the dependable average annual flow between the States
that the older established uses in both States will receive first
protection, The doctrine so announced leaves the Western States
to a rivalry and a contest of speed for future development. The