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<br />Ii :! <br /> <br /> <br />Bureau of Reclamation <br />and the Angl9 beneficia' <br />ries of federal projects. <br />, BY the time the Utes <br />went tQ court in -1972, <br />much of the Southern Ute <br />reservation was a mix of <br />Indian and non-Indian <br />land, and the water in the <br />'basin was in use. Over the <br />next decade, as Ute claims <br />wo,*ed their way through <br />the courts, the Anglo resi- <br />dents of the San Juan <br />Basin ciune to realize there <br />was a ,cloud over aJJ~non. <br />Indian \Valer rights, includ,- <br />ing A-LP. <br />It ,didn't come quickly, but the Anglo <br />b~kers of the project eve,ntually adapted to <br />the Ute threat, turning A-LP into a shield <br />which both protected exi~ting water uses and <br />paved the way for new uses. It did this by <br />hitching 'A-LP to a water rights agreement <br />be\Ween tile 1"'0 Ute lribes;'.O:>lorado, New <br />Me'xico and the U.S. <br />This was no casual eventL 'l'he agreement <br />- the 1988 Ute Indian Water Rights <br />Settlement Act - was ratified by the tribes, by <br />the U.S. ,Congress, and by the 1"'0 states, giv- <br /> <br />ing it a massive impri~ <br />matur. It has been called a <br />model of cooperation that <br />avoided yean; of litigation <br />and racial schism. Under it, <br />the tribes agreed to drop <br />their "paper" water claims <br />in court in exchange for a <br />guaranteed supply of "wet" <br />water from the Animas-La <br />Plata Project. The key to <br />the agreement was the idea <br />that" A-LP's "new" water <br />would make everyone <br />whole - the existing usen; <br />and the Utes. <br />In addition to agricul- <br />tural and municipal water from the now-built <br />Dolores' River Project for the Ute Mountain <br />Utes, the agreement promised the tribes 60,000 <br />acre-feet of water per year from A-LP, plus <br />$60.5 million in economic development funds. <br />It also avoided disrupting existing como' <br />munities. If the Utes had won in court, 34,000 <br />acres of irrigated nonJ]ndian land and the asso- <br />ciated towns would have been threatened. So <br />the Anglo interests got security for existing <br />water,rights and a reservoir full of new water <br />out of A-LP. On the Indian side, the Utes mar- <br />ried into a very powerful political coalition - <br /> <br />Christopher Tomlinson <br /> <br />Ray Frost <br /> <br />i(~::~, <br />;,:;~~~ <br />!";i":"", <br /> <br />Treaties like <br />these, and the ' <br />water rights <br />they implicitly <br />convey, are _ <br />common acrosS <br />the West; but ' <br />they are always: <br />. . <br />Ignored by the ; <br />Bureau of J <br />Reclamation <br />and the Anglo 0 <br />beneficiaries of ~ <br />federal projects~ <br />.' <br /> <br />. <br />" <br /> <br />! <br /> <br />, <br /> <br />~ <br /> <br /><~J <br /> <br />" <br /> <br /> <br />i~ <br />