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The River That Isn't There
What the 1922 Compact Actually Did
The Colorado River Compact is the founding document of western water law — and the founding document of the crisis that now consumes it. Understanding what it did, and what it was designed to do, is the prerequisite for understanding everything that follows in this series.
The Compact divided the river into Upper and Lower Basins at Lee Ferry, Arizona — a geographic point chosen because it was measurable, not because it was hydrologically meaningful. Each basin received 7.5 million acre-feet per year. The division was not based on consumption needs, population projections, or ecological requirements. It was a negotiated political settlement among seven state delegations, each of whom wanted as much water as possible for their state's future development.
The flow estimates used to justify the allocation came from measurements taken between 1905 and 1922 — a period that tree-ring reconstructions now confirm was anomalously wet. The Bureau of Reclamation's own engineers estimated long-term average flows at 16-18 million acre-feet. They were measuring during a wet outlier and treating it as baseline.
The Senior Rights System: First in Time, First in Right — Always
Prior appropriation — the legal doctrine governing western water — operates on a single principle: whoever established their water use first has priority when water runs short. "First in time, first in right." A senior rights holder gets their full allocation before a junior rights holder gets any.
In practice, this means California — whose Lower Basin allocation of 4.4 million acre-feet was established under the 1928 Boulder Canyon Project Act — receives its water before Arizona, Nevada, or any other Lower Basin state. When the Bureau of Reclamation imposes cuts, junior rights holders get cut first, deepest, and longest.
Since 2020, Arizona and Nevada have faced mandatory reductions. California — despite being the largest single user in the basin — has been protected by its senior position. This is not a bug. It is the explicit design of the prior appropriation system.
The Bureau of Reclamation's own 1922 measurements were taken during the wettest period in the Colorado River's 500-year recorded history. Tree-ring data — which provides a proxy for river flows over centuries — shows that the early 20th century was anomalously wet. The engineers measuring flow knew they were measuring during an outlier. The long-term average was lower. The allocation exceeded it.
Herbert Hoover, who represented the federal government at the 1922 negotiations, later acknowledged the allocation was likely based on inflated flow estimates. The state delegations — each fighting for maximum allocation — had no incentive to accept lower numbers.
The result: a legal framework allocating a river that doesn't exist — built on measurements taken during the wettest decade in half a millennium, negotiated by parties who prioritized their state's claims over hydrological reality, and enforced for 104 years as the basin's water supply has fallen to roughly half the allocated amount.
The Bureau of Reclamation's own 2012 study projected demand will exceed supply by 3.2 million acre-feet annually by 2060. The Compact was already over-allocated when it was signed. It becomes more over-allocated every decade.
The 1922 Compact's Most Important Omission
The Colorado River Compact was negotiated by representatives of seven states. It divided water between them, established priority systems between basins, and created the legal framework that governs the river to this day.
The Navajo Nation — whose reservation spans portions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and whose 1868 treaty with the United States promised a permanent home with adequate resources — was not invited to negotiate. Was not represented at Bishop's Lodge. Was not consulted about its water needs. Was not allocated a single acre-foot.
The Navajo Nation holds the most senior water rights in the Colorado Basin — established by treaty 54 years before the Compact. Under prior appropriation doctrine, those treaty rights should have been first in line. The 1922 Compact did not recognize them. Did not mention them. Did not include the people whose legal claim predated the entire framework by more than half a century.
That omission — one paragraph, or one line, or one seat at the table — is the originating injustice that Post 3 documents in full. We mention it here because it belongs in the founding document post. The machine that this series investigates was built with this exclusion as one of its load-bearing walls.
The 2007 Interim Guidelines governing Colorado River operations expire at the end of 2026. The Bureau of Reclamation set a deadline of February 14, 2026 for the seven basin states to reach consensus on replacement guidelines.
The deadline passed without agreement.
As of the date this post is published, the Bureau of Reclamation has released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement with public comment open through March 2, 2026. No state consensus has been reached. The Upper Basin states are pushing for shared reductions based on hydrological reality. The Lower Basin states — particularly California — are defending their senior position. Without agreement, the federal government may impose operations, potentially triggering litigation from every direction simultaneously.
The tribes — holding approximately 25% of the basin's average supply in senior rights — are watching states fight over allocations that, in aggregate, still exceed what the river produces. The Navajo Nation's Arizona settlement has been sitting in Congress since 2024. Unratified. Unfunded. Undelivered.
The river doesn't have enough water to honor the 1922 contracts. The states can't agree on new ones. The tribes with the oldest legal claims still don't have running water in 30-40% of their homes.
The engineers and diplomats who signed the 1922 Compact were not acting in bad faith. They were managing a genuine coordination problem: seven states with conflicting claims to a shared river, in an era before computational hydrology, with limited tree-ring data and no satellite measurement. The Compact prevented what could have been decades of interstate litigation and conflict. That is a real achievement.
The Law of the River — the accumulated body of compacts, treaties, decrees, and guidelines built on the 1922 foundation — has supported the development of one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world, sustained the growth of cities in the driest parts of North America, and generated hydropower that powered the American West for a century. None of that is nothing.
The prior appropriation doctrine's senior rights system has a legitimate rationale: investment in water infrastructure requires certainty. Farmers who built irrigation canals in 1880 needed to know their water would still be there in 1920. The seniority system provided that certainty, enabling investment and development that created genuine economic value.
What the Compact could not anticipate: a century of climate change that would reduce flows by nearly half. What it could have anticipated: the Navajo Nation's treaty rights. That omission has no comparable defense.
What the Physics Problem Sets Up
The Colorado River's "physics problem" — the gap between what was allocated and what exists — is the foundational condition for everything this series documents. It is not a metaphor. It is arithmetic. The river produces 8.5 million acre-feet. The contracts require 17.5 million. The gap is 9 million acre-feet of water that doesn't exist.
That gap creates the scarcity that makes water valuable. That scarcity makes water rights — senior water rights in particular — worth far more than the agricultural land they're attached to. And that value differential is what makes the machine in Posts 6 and 7 possible: private equity firms buying agricultural land at agricultural-value prices, then selling the attached water rights at scarcity-premium prices to suburban municipalities that need the water more than the market has yet priced it.
The machine doesn't create the scarcity. The physics does. The machine simply positions itself to extract from it.
In Post 2, we document the first extraction mechanism in the series: not a river but an aquifer. Not Arizona but Michigan. Not a $14 million profit but a $200 annual permit fee. The smallest price ever paid for the largest volume of public water in American history.
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