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<br />ATTACHMENT B <br /> <br />8. JUSTIFICATION AND EXPLANATION AS TO WHY THE DOLORES PROJECT IS <br />CONSIDERED TO BE OF NATIONAL URGENCY <br /> <br />The Dolores Project together with the edjacent Animas-La Plata <br />Project would solve serious social and economic problems of regional <br />significance relating to the establishment of Indian water rights and <br />could establish a precedence that would be instrumental in solving simi- <br />lar problems nationally. <br /> <br />The Justice Department has filed Civil Action No. C-4497 in the <br />United States District Court for the District of Colorado in which the <br />United States seeks to have the water rights of the Ute Mountain Ute <br />and Southern Ute Indian Tribes established in the San Juan River Basin <br />in Southwestern Colorado. Although these claims have not as yet been <br />defined in amount, preliminary inventories indicate that the Tribes own <br />in excess of 50,000 acres of arable land and vast quantities of coal. <br />Water will be needed to develop these resources. <br /> <br />Because of the legal precedents established by the United States <br />Supreme Court in Winters vs. United States, 207 U.S. 564, (1908) and <br />Arizona vs. California, 343 U.S. 546 (1963), it is expected that the <br />water rights claimed by the Indian Tribes will receive a priority date <br />as of 1868 when their Reservations were established. This date would <br />proceed and be senior to any of the water rights now using Colorado <br />River water in Colorado. <br /> <br />The Town of Mancos, population 1200, and the surrounding Mancos <br />Reclamation Project with an irrigated agricultural area of about 10,000 <br />acres will be affected most seriously by these pending water rights. The <br />Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe has potentially irrigatable lands located <br />downstream from Mancos that are several times larger in area than those <br />of the area irrigated by the Mancos Project. If the Tribe receives a <br />No.1 priority water right for their lands and builds facilities to put <br />the right to beneficial use, there will be essentially no water left for <br />the community of Mancos. The entire financial economy of the area could <br />be lost. <br /> <br />13 <br />