On November 24, 1922, seven men from Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming signed their names to a four-page document called the Colorado River Compact. Along with a series of subsequent agreements known as the Law of the River, the compact determined the fate of nearly every drop of water flowing through the Southwest and parts of the Intermountain West—a land of red rock plateaus and sagebrush expanses, of isolated mountain ranges and deep canyons, all connected and sustained by thousands of threads of water that gather into the thundering Colorado.
The compact’s goal was to jump-start “the expeditious agricultural and industrial development” of this arid country, and in that, it succeeded. On the river’s journey through seven states, two countries, and 30 federally recognized tribal communities, the river irrigates some of North America’s most productive farmland and helps electrify some of its biggest cities. Yet, like the Bible or the U.S. Constitution, the compact was written in a different era, and applying it to our modern lives can be challenging. Population growth has outpaced anything early planners anticipated, while climate change and aridification are shrinking snowpacks and depleting the soil of moisture. “For many years, we’ve been using more water than nature provides,” says Kevin Moran, associate vice president of regional
