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The La Plata and Southwestern districts have joined in a campaign to organize a new conservancy district covering all of La Plata County, Colorado. The present La Plata Water Conservancy District will be dissolved if the new district is organized. Efforts are also being made to form a new conservancy district in New Mexico which would include the municipal areas of Aztec, Farmington, Kirtland, etc., in the project area. Indian and Federal Water Right ProbJ.~ In November of 1972, the Justice Department on behalf of the United States government and the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute Indian tribes of southwestern Colorado filed a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (Civil Action No. C-4497), in which suit the United States seeks to have its water rights and the water rights of the Indian tribes established in the San Juan River basin in southwestern Colorado. Although these claims have not as yet been defined in amount, they are known to represent large quantities of water. Because of the legal precedents established by the United States Supreme Court in Winters vs. United States, 207 U. S. 564, (1908) and Arizona vs. California, 343 U. S. 546 (1963), it is expected that the water rights claimed by the Indian tribes will receive priority dates as of the establishment of the various reservations, which priority dates will be senior in right to all of the water rights now in use in the San Juan basin. It appears that the town of Mancos, population 1,200, and the surrounding Mancos reclamation project with an irrigated agricultural area of about 10,600 acres will be affected most seriously by these pending water rights. The Ute Mountain Ute Indian tribe has potentially irrigable lands located downstream from Mancos that are several times larger in area than that of the area irrigated by the Mancos project. If the tribe receives a first priority water right for their lands and builds facilities to put the right to beneficial use, there will be essentially no water left for the community of Mancos. The entire financial economy of the area could be lost. Probably the community with the second most serious impact would be Fort Lewis Mesa. This area's economy has already dwindled seriously as a result of the administration of the Colorado-New Mexico Interstate Compact on the La Plata River. During the 1920's there were about 20,000 acres of irrigated land on Fort Lewis Mesa that produced good crops. Marvel, the trading community of the area, had a thriving economy with about 15 businesses, including a bank. The irrigated acreage has now decreased to about 3 or 4 thousand acres with only a meager water supply. There is only one small general store in Marvel now. The impact resulting from prior Indian water rights could finish the area" s economy. The Animas-La Plata project provides the only practical solution to the critical social and financial problems that would otherwise develop as a result of the Indian water right claims. It would make about 80,000 acre-feet of water available for the development of land and mineral resources of the two Ute Indian tribes. As the definite plan report for the project is currently being formulated, an effort is being -4- -