LEUPP, Ariz. (AP) — A proposed water rights agreement for three Native American tribes that carries a higher price tag than any deal enacted by Congress took a significant step forward Monday night with introduction at the Navajo Nation Council.
The Navajo Nation has one of the largest outstanding claims in the Colorado River basin and will soon vote on the measure in a special session. It is the first of many approvals – which end in Congress – necessary to finalize the agreement.
Climate change, the coronavirus pandemic and demands placed on the river, like those that have allowed Phoenix, Las Vegas and other desert cities to thrive, have led tribes to negotiate agreements. The Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes hope to close the deal quickly under a Democratic administration in Arizona and with Joe Biden as president.
A landmark 1922 agreement divided water from the Colorado River basin among seven Western states but left out tribes. Tribes draw water from a variety of sources: the Colorado River, the Little Colorado River, aquifers and washes on tribal lands in northeastern Arizona.
Nearly a third of homes on the Navajo Nation, which spans 70,000 square kilometers across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, do not have running water. Many homes in Hopi are similarly situated.
San Juan Southern Paiute will vote on the agreement within weeks, said tribal chairman Robbin Preston Jr. Along with guaranteed water supplies, the tribe is asking Congress to approve a treaty it signed with the Navajo Nation in 2000 to establish an 8-acre reservation. .4 square miles (21.8 square kilometers) within the Navajo reservation.
“We will have economic opportunities that our tribal members have never seen before and that will give our people hope and pride,” Preston said.
Without an agreement, the tribes would be at the mercy of the courts. Already, the US Supreme Court ruled that the federal government is not bound by treaties with the Navajo Nation to guarantee water for the tribe. Navajo has the largest land base of any of the 574 federally recognized tribes and is second in population, with more than 400,000 citizens.
A separate case that has unfolded over decades in Arizona’s Little Colorado River Basin will likely result in far less water than the Navajo Nation says it needs because the tribe has to prove it has historically used the water. That’s hard to do when the tribe doesn’t have access to much of it, said Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch.
Congress has enacted nearly three dozen tribal water rights agreements in the U.S. since 1978. Federal negotiating teams are working on another 22 agreements involving 34 tribes in nine states, the Interior Department said.
The most expensive enacted by Congress was for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes in Montana, worth $1.9 billion. The Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes are seeking more than $5 billion for their settlement.
About $1.75 billion of that amount would finance a natural gas pipeline from Lake Powell, one of the two largest reservoirs in the Colorado River system on the Arizona-Utah border. The agreement would require the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to complete it by the end of 2040.
From there, the water would be delivered to dozens of tribal communities in remote areas.
“Any funding we get is funding we otherwise wouldn’t have,” Branch said. “It will be a challenge.”
The Navajo Nation has resolved its claims to the Colorado River basin in New Mexico and Utah. It is separately pursuing two other, much smaller settlements in New Mexico.
Arizona – located in the Lower Colorado River Basin with California, Nevada and Mexico – is the only one that also has an allocation in the Upper Basin. Under the terms of the agreement, the Navajo and Hopi would receive about 47,000 acre-feet in the Upper Basin – almost the entire amount that was set aside for use in the Upper Basin. Navajo Generating Stationa coal-fired power plant that closed at the end of 2019. The Navajo had already agreed not to look for that water for the 50 years before 2019.
The proposal also includes a combined 9,500 acre-feet per year of water from the Lower Colorado River Basin to Navajo and Hopi. Additionally, the Navajo would have the right to extract 40,780 acre-feet from the Little Colorado River — about a third of what is estimated to reach the reservation annually.
One acre-foot of water is approximately enough to serve two to three U.S. families annually.
Arizona, meanwhile, gains certainty about the amount of water available statewide as it is forced to reduce as overall supplies decline. The Navajo and Hopi, like other Arizona tribes, could be part of that solution if they secured the right to lease water within the state, which could be delivered through a canal system that already serves the Tucson and Phoenix metropolitan areas.
The two tribes came close to reaching a pact to establish water rights in Arizona in 2012, but the tentative agreement fell apart. This time, Navajo officials launched a public education campaign.
They held long community meetings with Navajo translations—“tó bee lá haz’ a” meaning “right to water,” for example—and described the role of water in the tribe’s creation story and ceremonies. and what is at stake if the deal fails.
In Leupp, the public asked mostly about immediate needs: fixing water pump electricity, improving roads and drilling wells.
Marlene Yazzie remembered her mother hitchhiking more than 100 miles to lobby tribal authorities for electricity and water — which never happened. Yazzie herself depends on the water transported to her home in nearby Birdsprings for washing, drinking and her livestock.
“How many more years do we have to wait?” she asked.
