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

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"practicably irrigable acreage" (or PIA) on its reservation.6

Indian water rights derived from Winters conflict in important ways with the

dominant, non-Indian arrangement of water rights in the American West. That system

of prior appropriation--or "first in time, first in right"-requires beneficial use of water

for a claim to be enforceable? But under the Winters doctrine, Indians need not use

water to have claims to it; indeed, non-Indians can use water for decades that is

actually Indian water. Also, Indian claims under the PIA standard are potentially

enormous. Irrigation consumes many times more water than municipal or industrial

(M&I) uses do,S and Indian reservations are often extensive, giving rise to potentially

huge claims.9

6 Arizona v. California 373 U.S. 546 (1963). This case also applied the reasoning
in Winters to federal reservations other than Indian reservations. Thus national forests,
wilderness areas, parks, and the like have federally-reserved water rights attached to
them. Id. at 601.

7D. Getches, Water Law 79-8fJ (1984).

&rhe main uses of water are agricultural, municipal, and industrial. In the West as
a whole, roughly 90 percent of all water is used for agricultural purposes. ~ Solley, W.,
..tlJ!l., Estimated Use of Water in the United States in 1985 62 (U.S. Geological Survey
Circular 1004, 1988). In the Upper Colorado Basin, 95 percent of water is used for
irrigation; in the Lower Colorado Basin, the figure is 84 percent; for the Rio Grande
Basin, 89 percent; and for the Great Basin, 91 percent. Id.

~e original PIA award, to the Indians of the Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Yuma,
Colorado River, and Fort Mohave Reservations in the Arizona v. California case, was
1.0 million acre-feet a year, a significant portion of the entire Colorado River's flow.
Arizona v. California, 363 U.S. 546. at 595-596 and 600 (1963). The PIA standard
produced an award of 500,717 acre-feet a year in the Wind River adjudication, just
under half the flow of the river. Numerous acreages and water allotments are discussed
but no total is given in the Wyoming Supreme Court opinion, In Re The General
Adjudication of All Ri~hts to Use Water in The Big Horn River System 753 P.2d 76 at
10D-111 (Wyo. 1988), affirmed by Wyoming v. United States. l09B'S. Ct. 2994 (1989).
It is regularly reponed in the Wyoming press that the award was 500,717 acre-feet a