INTERSTATE WATER CONFLICTS, COMPROMISES, AND COMPACTS: THE RIO GRANDE, 1880--1938 (COLORADO, NEW MEXICO, TEXAS

The struggle for water is one of the enduring legacies of the growth of the western United States. This struggle has occasionally pitted states against states, and it has even been the source of diplomatic confrontations between the United States and its neighbors. The first international water conflict began in the 1880s over the Rio Grande, but within a few years the international aspect had also taken on interstate characteristics involving Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. Only after years of controversy were compromise solutions reached to apportion the river's waters equitably among all its users above Fort Quitman, Texas.;The earliest of these compromises was reached at the 1904 National Irrigation Congress, and it provided a plan to divide the river's waters among users in New Mexico's Mesilla Valley and those in the El Paso Valley. The U.S. Reclamation Service was to build a dam at Elephant Butte, New Mexico, and distribute the waters according to the 1904 compromise through what became known as the Rio Grande Project. The 1904 agreement became law when Congress extended the 1902 Reclamation Act to the El Paso Valley in 1905. In so doing the legislators accepted the 1904 compromise as the basis for the first congressional apportionment of an interstate river--long before the 1928 Boulder Canyon Act, labeled by the U.S. Supreme Court in Arizona v. California (1963) as the first such legislative apportionment.;The 1904 agreement was later incorporated into broader accords encompassing all Rio Grande water users in Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas (above Fort Quitman), including those upstream from Elephant Butte Dam. The first new agreement was the 1929 Rio Grande Compact, which was a temporary solution while studies were done for a permanent compact. The Rio Grande Compact of 1938, which replaced the 1929 agreement, was the outcome of these studies. The 1938 compact's negotiators incorporated the 1904 compromise into a larger apportionment of the Rio Grande among Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas.