Colorado River and Dams - Federal Materials

The Colorado River is one of the longest rivers in the United States, and it has been a primary water source for settlements on the Colorado Plateau for roughly 12,000 years. Due to recurring cycles of flood and drought, the federal Reclamation Service (later named the Bureau of Reclamation) was established in the early 1900s to help regulate and conserve water in the west. The Reclamation Service determined that the Colorado River should be controlled and regulated to enable irrigation throughout the Southwest region.

Since there was not enough water in the river to irrigate all of the Southwest, the Colorado River Compact was established in 1922. The compact, signed by Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, divided the river between the Upper Colorado Basin and the Lower Colorado Basin. The seven states’ water rights were divided between the two basins. Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming received water from the Upper Basin. Arizona, California, and Nevada received water from the Lower Basin. Dams were then constructed throughout the Colorado River to store and regulate water. The State of Arizona, concerned over the Lower Basin water distribution between Arizona and California, disputed the agreement in various court cases between the 1930s and 2000. In recent years, due to decreasing water levels in the region, the compact has been the focus of some criticism.   

This federal collection, which represents the rich history of the Colorado River in Arizona, contains federal wildlife and environmental studies from the U.S. Department of the Interior, congressional records, histories, and engineering summaries about dams from the Bureau of Reclamation.

Federal publications are printed by the authority of Congress or by executive or judicial agencies at taxpayer expense and are distributed to federal agencies, their clientele and to depository libraries which serve the public. The State of Arizona Research Library is the Regional Federal Depository Library for Arizona.

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