Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover presides over the signing of the Colorado River Compact, Bishop's
Lodge, outside Santa Fe, New Mexico, November 1922.
Courtesy of U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Reclamation.

 The West Against Itself:The Colorado River-An Institutional History by Norris Hundley, jr.

Water Wars: An Introduction to the Law of the River

Dividing the River legal history presentations examined how the river has been perceived by most westerners as a resource to sustain transportation, irrigation, and "urban archipelagoes" such as Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. The "rights" theme embodies how notions of ownership, use, and access are understood and played out in the West, and how these notions are interpreted through different historical, philosophical, legal, and cultural lenses. By looking at the Colorado River, the Moving Waters project helped the public gain an understanding of how western communities try to regulate flow for sustained existence, predicated on the knowledge that growth will continue and that the Colorado River is central to the West's population expansion.

U. S. Bureau of Reclamation art108a

Humanities issues framed questions about the role of the government as protector of environment, as promoter of special interests, as agent of cultural change, preservation, and destruction. By looking at the Colorado River as a contested terrain, the project posed the question, "What does it mean to transfer or divert the river to water the garden of the West?"
 
 

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