WSP08807

• File Number: 8220.106
• Description: Animas-La Plata
• State: CO
• Basin: San Juan/Dolores
• Water Division: 7
• Date: 10/26/1990
• Author: Judith Jacobsen
• Title: The Navajo Indian Irrigation Project and Quantification of Navajo Winters Rights
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

26

State Engineer Steven Reynolds before the Senate Subcommittee on Irrigation and

Reclamation in 1961. In a section-by-sectlon explanation of the bill under discussion,

he said of section 8, which became section 12(a):

Section 8 of the draft was inserted to give Colorado assurance that all uses
from these projects in New Mexico or Arizona will be chargeable to the
allocations given New Mexico and Arizona by the Upper Colorado River Basin
compact, and that the riltht to use amounts in excess of those allocations will
not be claimed under the Winters doctrine. Jre 'reservation theotj or some
other theory of water law. [emphasis added]

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Equally suggestive of legislative intent to limit Navajo rights is an interchange between

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Congressman Wayne Aspinall of Colorado, chair of the full Committee on Interior

and Insular Affairs while NIIP was under discussion, and then-Governor of New

Mexico Ed Mecham in House hearings held in 1961. Mecham agreed with Aspinall's

statement that "Indian rights as such in New Mexico will be limited to the amount of

water provided for in the Navajo part of the project."70

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69Senate Hearini 1961..2l1lli! note 17 at 32. A similar interchange occurred in 1970
between Reynolds and Colorado Representative Wayne Aspinall in hearings on bills to
amend the NIIP legislation to change the project's boundaries and increase its
appropriation ceiling. Aspinall asked Reynolds, "Before the San Juan-Chama Navajo
project was authorized, the State of New Mexico received from the Navajo Indian Tribe
a disclaimer to any use of further amounts of water other than these, isn't that correct?"
Reynolds agreed with that statement, that the "disclaimer is still in existence," and that
. New Mexico considered the disclaimer "a binding contract between the State of New
Mexico and the Navajo Indian Tribe controlling the States [sic] right to use of water
from the Colorado River." Nav&jo I~ian Irril:ation Proiect: Hearinl: on S. 203 andER
13011 Before the Subcommittee on Irril:ation and Reclamation of the House Committee
on Interior and Insular Affiars. 9lst Cong., 2d Sess. 45 (1970) (questioning of Steven
Reynolds, New Mexico State Engineer). (Hereinafter. J-Iouse Hearini 1970].

7oHouse Hearini 1961..sJ.Ulm note 14 at 21-22.

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