REVISITING THE COLORADO RIVER COMPACT: TIME FOR A CHANGE?

Abstract

More than three quarters of a century ago, at Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe, New Mexico, representatives of the seven Colorado River basin states met with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover to negotiate allocation of water from the Colorado River, a lifeline of liquid wealth that was-and still is-viewed as critical to the economic development and prosperity of those states. The meetings culminated in the 1922 Colorado River Compact (hereinafter "the compact"), the first interstate compact designed to allocate an interstate river. Although the compact itself is quite brief, its ratification and implementation generated one sub-basin interstate compact, and thousands of pages of statutes, regulations, administrative policies, U.S. Supreme Court opinions, lower court decisions, and other documents collectively known as the "Law of the River."