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water distribution between the riparians. This would seem to indicate that other issues
such as pollution, energy and fishing are not as contentious as supply of fresh water and
not as susceptible to the likelihood of hold up. The second pattern that emerges is that
two-thirds of all legal challenges occurred in the Rio Grande or Colorado River basins.
These are the only two major basins classified as highly stressed in the United States. All
of the compacts that were challenged in these two basins involved the water distribution
element of the agreements. This appears to support the idea that increasing the scarcity
of the good will increase the likelihood of upstream states pursuing opportunistic
behavior. Once again these are only preliminary findings because we only have the
dependent variable collected.
Colorado River Compact
The majority of the compacts in Western states regard water apportionment,
whereas those in Eastern states tend to focus more on pollution and the costs associated
with cleanup. In Texas v. New Mexico (1988) the United States Supreme Court ruled that
the Pecos River Compact was a contract, citing Justice Frankfurter’s dissent in Petty v.
Tennessee-Missouri Bridge Commission (1959) in which he stated “a compact is, after
all, a contract.” In Dyer v. Sims (1950) Justice Frankfurter, writing for the majority of the
Supreme Court, argued that the Court has the power to decide the meaning and validity of
compacts and that states cannot determine the meaning of the compact themselves. In the
case of Texas v. New Mexico (1988) the Supreme Court ruled that New Mexico violated
the contract and assigned a Special Master to monitor the Pecos River. New Mexico was
Convention