The river is overallocated, and the compact was "designed for a West that never developed and will never exist, and that's a West of small yeoman farmers who are going to irrigate the desert on small family farms. It was a great idea in Ohio. It was never a workable idea in the West."

The result: water institutions that don't match reality. "There is a tremendous disjunction between our use of water and the economic reality of the new West."

Raley: "I've heard it for decades (that the compact is outdated). . . . Almost without exception (that view) comes from people that either don't understand how it works or they're using some sort of value-laden words like 'old' — like the Constitution's old. The argument's somewhat silly."

The real objections of critics aren't that the compact doesn't work but that "they don't like the outcome," he charged.

Some people imagine that if they could be king or queen for a day, they could fix the system, he said. They think "they could do better than the seven states did in 1922. They disparage the work of the states, and really what they're saying is that they know better."

Dividing the water

McCool: A new law of the river would amend the compact to "match hydrologic reality and the economic and demographic reality of the new West."

Environmental interests would get more emphasis in new water allocations, and advocates for nature would play an important role in negotiating a redesigned compact.

"First of all, we would change water law through an open, democratic and collaborative process that includes all stakeholders, not just corporate agribusiness and hydropower utilities."

That never happened before, McCool said. "When the law of the river was written, it was a tiny group" of special interests, excluding types of people who now make up most of the West.

Raley: Everyone has known for a long time that the estimate of the Colorado's flow as contained in the compact is off. "The hydrology that was available to the states at the time" was not as complete as it is now.

"They had less data available to them. They did the best with the data available." Since then, 80 additional years of records have piled up and scientists have developed methods of studying ancient tree rings — "paleo-dendrology," Raley calls it — that give a long-term picture.

Still, he said, he disagrees sharply that the system is flawed because the earlier estimate was off.