Correction: Douglas Kenney's name was misspelled in the original
version of this article. It's become increasingly clear that the
demands put on the Colorado River by the seven thirsty states in
its basin are not sustainable. A complex web of treaties,
compacts, laws and court decisions govern who can use the once-
mighty river's water and when. But over the last several
decades, those rules have not kept the yearly demand for water
from exceeding the average flow. "People have known since the
1940s, if not earlier, that this river was over-allocated and
that, at some point, it's going to be a major problem," said
Douglas Kenney, senior research associate at the University of
Colorado's Natural Resources Law Center. "The demand on the
river has grown slowly and steadily," he said. "That, combined
with recent understanding of what climate change is going to do
to this region, all of a sudden has opened people's eyes.
Improvements need to be made to how we manage this river."
Kenney and two of his colleagues hav