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LAS VEGAS — Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and officials from seven Western states signed a sweeping agreement Thursday to conserve and share scarce Colorado River water, ending a divisive battle among the thirsty rivals.

"This is the most important agreement among the seven basin states since the original 1922 compact," Kempthorne said, referring to a water-use agreement covering Arizona, California, Nevada, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

The 20-year plan, which took effect with Kempthorne's signature, resolved several legal disputes among water agencies in the states and formalized rules to cooperate during the ongoing drought gripping the region.

The states also commit, Kempthorne said, "to address future controversies on the river through consultation and negotiation before . . . litigation."

Saying he was "determined not to get ensnared in the politics of the issue," Kempthorne called it "a simple fact that the Earth is warming."

"We have to figure out how this is going to affect our water supply," he said.

A cornerstone element of the drought plan affecting more than 30 million people lets the lower-basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada use the vast Lake Mead reservoir behind Hoover Dam to store water they conserve or don't need for use later.

For the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, that arrangement could mean storing almost 1.5 million acre-feet of conserved water in Lake Mead, said Timothy F. Brick, the chief of the MWD board. The district is the water wholesaler to 26 cities and water districts serving about 18 million people.

"That additional storage is equivalent to building a reservoir that is almost twice the size of Diamond Valley Lake," Brick said, referring to the district's largest reservoir near Hemet in Riverside County.

"This landmark new plan will help California recover some of the water reliability that Mother Nature has taken away during the eight years of record drought," Brick added.

"This is truly an historic moment," Kempthorne told more than 800 members of the Colorado River Water Users Association meeting at Caesars Palace.

He recalled a recent trip to the parched Southeast and quoted a 2003 report by the Council of State Governments that cites the prevalence of water conflicts "within states, among states, between states and the federal government, and among environmentalists and state and federal agencies."

"Everybody is talking about drought," he said before waving the signed documents aloft amid applause and calling the agreement a model for others to follow.

"If the seven states of the Colorado River basin can get together and work out a deal, then surely anybody can," he said to laughter from an audience familiar with decades of sometimes acrimonious water fights.

"Celebrate this day," he said. "This is huge."

The agreements — six formal documents bound together by a federal record of decision — fit together like a jigsaw puzzle, with four key elements.

They specify how and when agencies will face reductions during drought, and set new rules allowing the reservoirs of Lake Powell and Lake Mead "to rise and fall in tandem, thereby better sharing the risk of drought," Kempthorne said.

The agreements also establish rules for handling surplus water in times of plentiful runoff, and they encourage water conservation.

The pact ends competition between upper Colorado River basin states served by Lake Powell and the lower basin states served by Lake Mead.

"The conjunctive management of those two reservoirs is key to this whole agreement," said Kip White, spokesman for the federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages Colorado River flows. "That's never been done before."