WSP10764

• File Number: 8277.200
• Description: California Water Resources Association/California Salinity Projects
• State: CA
• Basin: Colorado Mainstem
• Date: 1/1/1963
• Title: Colorado River Board of California Annual Report 1969
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Annual Report

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States of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah, and Wyoming, apportioned 50,000
acre-feet per year to Arizona. The Navajo
Indian Reservation, which is located partial-
ly in that portion of Arizona within the
Upper Colorado River Basin, presently uses
approximately 13,000 acre-feet per year from
the Upper Colorado River system. The
Upper Colorado River Basin Compact does
not affect obligations of the United States to
Indian Tribes.
During negotiation of the contract with
the Salt River Project Agricultural Improve-
ment and Power District for use of water
from Lake Powell for the proposed Navajo
Powerplant at Page, Arizona, the Secretary
of the Interior obtained a resolution from the
Navajo Tribal Council entitled "Approving
the Allocation of 34,100 Acre-Feet of Water
From the Upper Colorado River Basin and
Promising to Limit the Navajo Tribe's Claim
for Water From the Upper Colorado River
Basin to 50,000 Acre-Feet Per Year." The
Legal Services Agency attacked the Council's
action and rendered an opinion that this reso-
lution constituted a waiver of the, Tribe's
rights to use of water from the Upper Colora-
do River system. Following are the key
points stated in this opinion:

1. The water rights of the Navajo Tribe were not
defined by either the Colorado River Compact or
the Upper Colorado River Compact, and thus the
Tribe's reserved water claim casts a cloud upon
the water title of every state.
2. The basis of the Indian claims is the so-called
"Winters Doctrine," a ruling by the U.S. Su-
preme Court in 1908 that Indians have rights to
adequate water for their reservations that take
precedence over states' rights established at later
dates than the reservations.
3. The amount of water to be claimed should be
determined by conducting an irrigation feasibili-
ty survey, with water rights to be associated with
all of the practicably irrigable acreage on the
reservation. However, consumptive use of the
water is not limited to agricultural purposes.
4, Water to which the Tribe may acquire title is
salable; therefore, if it could perfect' title by liti-
gation, the Tribe could then sell its water.

5. The Navajo Tribal Council's resolution waives
the Tribe's claim to all water of the Upper Basin,
which includes the Colorado River, the San Juan
River, and their tributaries.
6. The Tribe's legal recourse is rescission of the
resolution and a petition to the Secretary of the
Interior not to make any contracts pursuant to
the resolution, or, alternatively, a declaratory
judgment action against Arizona and the Upper
Colorado River Compact states to have the reso-
lution and any contracts under it nullified, and
a quiet title action against appropriate states to
have the Tribe's rights to the Basin's waters judi-
cially determined.

Water Supplies and Deliveries
During the year the staff continued collec-
tion of basic water supply and delivery data.
Data in this section are reported for the
water year from October 1, 1968, through
September 30, 1969.

Stream Flow and Storage. Flow of the
Colorado River at Lee Ferry during the
water year was 8,863,000 acre-feet. Adjusted
for changes in surface and bank storage in
Upper Basin reservoirs and for storage
changes at transbasin reservoirs, the quantity
becomes 11,472,000 acre-feet. The Bureau of
Reclamation estimates that if there had been
no upstream man-made depletions, virgin
flow at Lee Ferry would have been approxi-
mately 14,400,000 acre-feet. For comparison,
the estimated annual average undepleted or
virgin flow was 13.7 million acre-feet during
the 1922-69 period of record and 14.8 million
acre-feet during the 1896-1969 period. Plate
5 shows estimated annual virgin flows at Lee
Ferry since 1896.
The 1968-69 water year measured flows at
the three upstream stations accounting for
approximately 95 percent of inflow to Lake
Powell are shown in Table 1. Regulated re-
leases below Hoover Dam, which were limit-
ed to amounts necessary to meet consump-
tive use requirements in the United States
and obligations to Mexico, are also shown in
Table 1.

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