Vena Pointer (1880 – 1971), was Colorado's first female water lawyer. She was born in Kansas and moved to Colorado in 1911 after she took a job working in George Wallis' law firm.
Throughout her career, Pointer worked as a prominent member of Colorado's water community and served as one of the original board members of the
Colorado Water Conservation Board The Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) operates as a division of the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. The Colorado legislature founded the Colorado Water Conservation Board (CWCB) through the passage of HousBill no. 6in 1937 for the " ...
when it was founded in 1937.
Career
Pointer was the last person in Colorado to be admitted to the bar under the practice of
clerk
A clerk is a white-collar worker who conducts general office tasks, or a worker who performs similar sales-related tasks in a retail environment. The responsibilities of clerical workers commonly include record keeping, filing, staffing service ...
ship. Clerkship was a system in which, a person would read the law, rather than attended law school, in preparation for admittance to the bar. Pointer read the law for seven years and passed her examination in 1926, making her Colorado's first female water lawyer. Following her admittance to the bar, Pointer worked with her law partner Fred Sabin in
Pueblo, Colorado
Pueblo () is a List of municipalities in Colorado#Home rule municipality, home rule municipality that is the county seat and the List of municipalities in Colorado, most populous municipality of Pueblo County, Colorado, Pueblo County, Colorado ...
till his death in 1931.
Throughout her career, Pointer served as distinguished member of the Colorado water community. She served as the secretary of the Arkansas Valley Ditch Association from 1919–1959.
During her career, Pointer worked on projects that attempted to solve and settle water disputes between Colorado and Kansas on the Arkansas River. In part, her work was central to development of the Arkansas River Compact. Signed in 1949 the Arkansas River Compact settled a number of disputes over water rights between Kansas and Colorado that had existed since 1901.
In part, her prominence in Colorado water law led Governor
Edwin C. Johnson
Edwin Carl Johnson (January 1, 1884 – May 30, 1970) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as both governor of and U.S. senator from the state of Colorado.
Background
Johnson was born in Scandia in Republic County in ...
to appoint Pointer to serve as a member of the 1933 Caddoa Commission. This commission was tasked with studying the feasibility of constructing a flood-control reservoir near the small town of
Caddoa, Colorado.
The construction of the Caddoa dam and reservoir represented one way to develop new water supplies for the Arkansas River, while also providing flood and irrigation control to Kansas' water users. Construction on the dam began in 1940 and in the same year it was renamed the John Martin Reservoir, after Senator John A. Martin.
References
External links
Arkansas River Compact
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pointer, Vena
1880 births
1971 deaths
Kansas lawyers
People from Kansas
Water law in the United States
People from Pueblo, Colorado
20th-century American lawyers