Aren’t there (or were there) court cases limiting the amount of water Nevada and Arizona can extract from the Colorado River?
The way Las Vegas has been booming, sooner or later they’re going to have to look elsewhere for additional sources of water, or dramatically change their current ways of doing things there in the Silver State.
Again, California has tons of energy, they’re just lacking the political will to extract it (because the democrats run the show, and they’re beholden to the extreme environmentalists and the anti-business types).
There is a Colorado River Compact, going back to 1922, that specifies who gets what water out of the Colorado River. It has been amended (a bit) over the years, but it is still the seven-state agreement that holds who gets what.
http://www.usbr.gov/lc/region/g1000/pdfiles/crcompct.pdf
sorry, i did not see your post earlier.
yes, there is a “colorado river water compact” of 1922. the u.s. federal government moderates the fights between the cities and states over the water.
see:
http://cobweb.scarymonsters.net/~corleyj/azca/compact.html
i only know what i read occasionally about it in the los angeles times.