La Jicarita News -- August 2007
http://www.lajicarita.org/currentissue.htm#updates


While the Navajo Tribal Chairman is on record supporting S. 1171, there is plenty of opposition to the bill from both Indian and non-Indian constituents. The Navajo-Gallup pipeline would serve 43 of the 110 Navajo Nation chapters, and several of them, whose water is contaminated from past uranium mining, are on record opposing the project as an unfair allocation to communities. In a letter to the Albuquerque Journal, Elouise Brown, President of Dooda Desert Rock (the Navajo organization opposed to the proposed Desert Rock coal fired power plant on the reservation), wrote that "The proposed diversion across hundreds of miles of desert smacks more of the white man's predisposition toward resource exploitation than it does of traditional Native American values of cautious use of resources."

Steve Cone of Citizens Progressive Alliance in Farmington, has written numerous op-eds and letters stating his group's concern that there is insufficient water to support both the Navajo-Gallup pipeline and the Navajo Irrigation Project. He claims the Colorado River (headwaters of the San Juan River) is already over-allocated and that approval of the settlement will "further deplete and effectively desiccate the San Juan River, jeopardizing the hydrologic future of the entire Basin . . . ." He particularly lambasts the recently revised Hydrologic Determination by the Department of the Interior that "there is likely to be sufficient water to support the proposed contract [Navajo-Gallup pipeline]." The Bureau's determination is based on numerous controversial assumptions, particularly the claim that reduced evaporation rates due to the region's most recent drought will help provide the necessary water resources for the project. The Bureau argues that because less water is evaporating from drought-shrunken reservoirs, more water is actually available for diversion.

Updates on Water Transfer Protests and Adjudications
By Kay Matthews
La Jicarita News -- August 2007

Santa Fe County Proposed Water Transfers

The city and county of Santa Fe have been busily applying to transfer water rights over the past year to the Buckman Well Field and the Buckman Direct Diversion (which doesn't yet exist, of course) to offset depletions at the wells and for future development. While the city will be accessing over 5,000 acre feet per year (afy) of San Juan/Chama Project water through the Buckman Diversion, the county has a contract for only 375 feet of Project water and therefore is buying and transferring water rights, primarily from the Middle Rio Grande Basin, to fill its diversion allotment of 1,700 afy.

Many of these proposed water transfers are being protested by individuals and organizations concerned that they will impair existing wells and are not in the best interest of the public. As we reported in La Jicarita News in the April 2007 issue, over 200 well owners in the county filed protests against the county's eight applications to transfer 110 afy water to 19 wells scattered throughout the county to supplement the Buckman wells. The move-to wells are spread out from South 14, through the community college area and Agua Fria Village, to NM 599 near the intersection of CR 62. The proposed transfer rights belong to developers who are required to provide water to the county utility before getting approval for their building projects.

The protests were filed because the public doesn't know which of the 19 wells will actually be pumped or how much water will be pumped at each well. The Santa Fe Well Owners Association and the Santa Fe Basin Water Association (SFBWA) worked together to encourage county well owners to protest the proposed transfers. John McGill, president of the SFBWA, recently met with Mary Young of the Water Rights Division of the Office of the State Engineer (OSE) to get an update on the status of the protests. Young informed McGill that one of the eight applications has been withdrawn (from a farm in the Agua Fria area of Santa Fe), reducing the number of acre feet to 92. She also reiterated that the county's applications have created a unique situation for the OSE because it must review all of the applications without knowing which move-to wells will actually be used by the county.

The protests have now been moved to the Litigation Division of the OSE, and letters to the protestants will soon be sent out, which are pro forma in these cases, asking if the protestants and applicants can work together to resolve the issue. According to McGill, the SFBWA will be working with the protestants to consolidate their protests and have one protest carried forward by the organization, basing their case on the potential impairment of county well owners by the move-to wells.

There is also some controversy as to whether the County Commissioners formally approved the County Water Utility's decision to file the applications before determining which of the 19 wells will eventually be used.

Navajo Nation Water Rights Settlement

While federal legislation was introduced this year to implement the Navajo/San Juan River Water Rights Settlement, the cost of the project is a significant stumbling block. The $800 million price tag includes several major water projects: the Navajo Irrigation Project and the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, both of which have generated opposition from non-Indian citizens' groups that claim previous funding slated for the projects has been wasted and that the projects cater to special interest groups that promote unrestrained growth.

In April, New Mexico senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman introduced the Northwestern New Mexico Rural Water Projects Act (S. 1171) that would contribute funding over two decades to construct the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Pipeline and take other steps to settle the Navajo water rights claim on the San Juan River. But representatives from the Bureau of Reclamation and the Department of Interior, representing the current administration, had this to say about the bill in testimony before the Energy and Natural Resources Committee: "If enacted, the cost of S. 1171, alone, is estimated to exceed 1 billion dollars. If the other two proposals from New Mexico, Aamodt (involving the Pueblos of Nambe, Pojoaque, San Ildefonso, and Tesuque) and Abeyta (involving the Pueblo of Taos), about which the Administration also has raised serious concerns, were to be enacted as currently envisioned by their proponents, total expenditures for Indian water rights settlements in New Mexico alone are likely to exceed $1.5 billion. . . . The Administration did not participate in the drafting of the water rights settlement embodied in S. 1171, and does not support a water settlement under these circumstances."

Not to be deterred, New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici then came up with a scheme to fund all three New Mexico Indian Water Rights settlements: Navajo Nation, Aamodt, and Abeyta. In June he introduced the Reclamation Water Settlements Fund Act of 2007, which would authorize a 10-year funding source to generate an estimated 1.37 billion to pay for the three settlements after all the issues have been resolved and they are signed into law. The fund would be used for planning, designing, or construction activities of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Furthermore, at a Senate Budget Committee confirmation hearing for former Iowa Representative Jim Nussle, who has been nominated to head the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Domenici made it clear that to get his support Nussle needed to assure the senator that the OMB will "be more receptive to resolving these water settlements." (He apparently got that assurance; the Bush administration will not oppose his legislation.)

While the Navajo Tribal Chairman is on record supporting S. 1171, there is plenty of opposition to the bill from both Indian and non-Indian constituents. The Navajo-Gallup pipeline would serve 43 of the 110 Navajo Nation chapters, and several of them, whose water is contaminated from past uranium mining, are on record opposing the project as an unfair allocation to communities. In a letter to the Albuquerque Journal, Elouise Brown, President of Dooda Desert Rock (the Navajo organization opposed to the proposed Desert Rock coal fired power plant on the reservation), wrote that "The proposed diversion across hundreds of miles of desert smacks more of the white man's predisposition toward resource exploitation than it does of traditional Native American values of cautious use of resources."

Steve Cone of Citizens Progressive Alliance in Farmington, has written numerous op-eds and letters stating his group's concern that there is insufficient water to support both the Navajo-Gallup pipeline and the Navajo Irrigation Project. He claims the Colorado River (headwaters of the San Juan River) is already over-allocated and that approval of the settlement will "further deplete and effectively desiccate the San Juan River, jeopardizing the hydrologic future of the entire Basin . . . ." He particularly lambasts the recently revised Hydrologic Determination by the Department of the Interior that "there is likely to be sufficient water to support the proposed contract [Navajo-Gallup pipeline]." The Bureau's determination is based on numerous controversial assumptions, particularly the claim that reduced evaporation rates due to the region's most recent drought will help provide the necessary water resources for the project. The Bureau argues that because less water is evaporating from drought-shrunken reservoirs, more water is actually available for diversion.

Ute Mountain Ute Settlements

Critics of the Navajo settlement cite the Colorado Ute Indian Final Water Rights Settlement's Animas-La Plata Project (ALP) as the boondoggle the Navajo settlement may be doomed to repeat. This Indian settlement was signed in 2000 but is currently being challenged in the Colorado Supreme Court by the Citizens Progressive Alliance.

The ALP, a significant component of the settlement, has a long and complicated history. The 1966 proposal called for an irrigation diversion from the Animas River to the La Plata through a series of canals and storage vessels: three dams, two reservoirs, and hundreds of miles of pipeline and canals. It would have cost the federal government $310 million, local non-Indians $200 million, and the tribes $13 million. The Bureau of Reclamation deemed that project infeasible, and after strong opposition from local residents, governmental agencies, and environmentalists, a second proposal, in 1979, moved the point of diversion downstream on the Animas River (near Durango) where the water would be pumped up 500 feet and two miles to a reservoir, then pumped up another 400 feet and moved west 25 miles to irrigate what is called the "Dry Side" of La Plata. Congress initially approved the settlement in 1988, but when the Environmental Improvement Agency failed to approve the project because of water quality concerns, the settlement was amended in 2000, eliminating the irrigation component. It was called "ALP Ultralite" and was slated only for municipal and industrial use.

This project is also being challenged as economically infeasible: specifically, that one of the signatories, the Southwestern Water Conservation District, will not be putting the water to beneficial use because it is not to be used for irrigation; and that the Ute tribes cannot claim they will use the water for municipal or industrial use because neither use exists on the reservations.

The Ute Mountain Ute Tribe has also filed a Winters Doctrine claim on the San Juan River (20% of the reservation is in New Mexico) for 7,300-9,300 afy to be used to develop a coal fired electric generating plant or for other development purposes. (The Winters Doctrine declares that when Congress reserved land for Indian reservations it also reserved water needs, both present and future, to fulfill the purpose of the reservation.). If a settlement is not reached in the Navajo adjudication, the tribe could also assert a Winters Doctrine claim on the San Juan River. According to Steve Cone, however, that doctrine "holds that the only feasible or fair method of quantifying tribal water rights is through a determination of the 'practicably irrigable acreage' of the reservation land in question." The Alliance believes this would entail much less water than the tribe will receive in the proposed settlement.

So in both cases the future remains unpredictable. But what happens in both the Navajo and Ute settlements will ultimately affect how much water is available in New Mexico for both irrigators and city dwellers.