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1990 ject would harm the endangered Colorado squawfish. That issue is due to be resolved early next year. In the meantime, other critics both off and on the reservation have renewed their arguments about why Animas-La Plata should not be built at all. Environmentalists maintain that the pro- ject's massive use of energy still makes it too inefficient and uneconomic. They also point out that although the settlement of the Indians' water rights breathed new life into the para- lyzed. water project, Anglos will receive far more project water than the Utes. "The project isn't for our benefit," argues Ray Frost, a Southern Ute and an outspoken critic of both the Animas-La Plata Project and the trihal leadership that supports it. "The Anglos are just riding our shoulders." The project's critics further argue thatthe Utes' needs could be met with a far smaller, less expensive project. "At most what we have is a $15 million problem of Indian water rights," says Jeanne Englert, a founding mem- ber of Taxpayers for the Animas River, a Durango, Colo., group that opposes the project. "Unfortunately, (this project) proposes a $600 million solution." , The Ute tribal leadership supported the proposed project as a way to get real water, not the "paper water" that costly litigation might provide. The Southern Utes also will get $20 million in "development funds;" the Ute Mountain Utes $40.5 million. But just how much the project will benefit the Utes whose participatioo made it possible is still hotly debated. ". don't think the project would have suc- ceeded for a minute if it Wasn 'tthe vehicle for an Indian water rights settlement," says Scott McElroy, water counsel to the Southern Utes. Indeed, the unresolved questioo of the two tribes' water rights had posed a formidable bar- rier to the regioo's dream of capturing the flows of the Animas and La Plata rivers for its farms, towns and reservations. The Indians could have claimed much of the water. Now some Utes wonder if they can afford the water, or if they will ever get their share. The reason is how ,the construction of the Animas-La Plata Project is staged and financed. The Animas-La Plata Project will divert water from the two rivers it is named after to a mammoth network of pumping plants and transportation conduits anchored by two reser- voirs. The network, in turn, will supply the Ute tribes, the Navajo Nation, Anglo irrigators, and the towns of Durango, Cola" and Farmington, Aztec and Bloomfield, N.M. The project may change in response to its current impasse with the squawfish. As currently' planned, about one-third of the water in the 195,400-acre-foot water scheme is assigned to the Utes. The,project has been divided into Phase I - half of which will be paid for with revenues from federal hydroelectric dams on. the Colorado River - and Phase II, which will be paid for entirely by the water users. All of the Utes' water will be stored in Ridges Basin Reservoir, which is the center- piece of Phase I. Yet nearly all of the farmland slated to be irrigated with water delivered with Phase. facilities belongs to Anglos. Of some 65,700 acre-feet of irrigation water to be deliv- ered to surrounding farmland, only 2,600 acre- feet of water will reach the Southern Ute reser- vation. Phase II would give the tribes 27,100 acre-feet for irrigation. Although some Utes are not happy with the project, the ones in power are satisfied. The Ute Mountain Utes are slated to receive water from the nearby Dolores River project in 1994. Water from Phase II of the Animas-La Plata will complete their agricul- tural plans, which include building the "largest farming and ranching operation in the county," said Mike Preston, agricultural development coordinator for the tri,be. Southern Ute Tribal Chairman Leonard Burch calls the project "a darn good deal." He says Phase I will deliver water to the arid, thin- ly populated west side of the reservation, open- ing it up for settlement by an increasingly pop- ulous tribe, Water rights on streams in the heavily settled eastern part of the reservation will be secured. And the municipal and indus- trial water, which constitutes most of the tribe's allocation, will eventually help develop the reservation's huge coal reserves. "The primary thing is to keep it right here for our own people to develop our land and the continued on ~ge 28 "At most what we have is a $15 million problem of Indian water , rights, unfcrtunately, (this project) proposes a $600 million solution~ - .Jeanne Englert. Taxpayers for the AnImas RIve: C 1996 High COUI1trV News - 2S