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binding on any party with respect to how a party may use its water rights. The anticipated depletions are <br />based on reasonable assumptions of use within the water rights for Navajo Nation and non- Navajo uses <br />in the Basin. For example, it is anticipated that, on average, about 5 percent of the acreage within large <br />irrigation projects such as the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project and the Hogback -Cudei Irrigation Project <br />will be fallow. Similarly, it is anticipated that the non -Indian irrigators will not irrigate every water right <br />acre each year and will not deplete water in excess of the historic irrigation use. To use the full water <br />right acreage to determine average annual depletions would guarantee that some of New Mexico's <br />Upper Basin apportionment would remain unused by New Mexico. In some instances, most notably in <br />the Animas River valley, current irrigation use is significantly less than the historic irrigation use. With <br />the exception of the Bureau of Reclamation's Hammond Irrigation Project, the non -Indian irrigation <br />depletions shown in the depletion schedule are based on the historic peak of the amount of acreage <br />irrigated in a year within the specified areas or projects, which peak generally occurred about 1965. No <br />attempt is made in the depletion schedule to reflect transfers of water rights from irrigation to municipal <br />and industrial uses from 1965 to the present or into the future because to do so would not change the <br />total anticipated depletion in the Upper Basin in New Mexico, and no attempt is made to speculate as to <br />how much water rights may be determined in the San Juan River Adjudication to be forfeited or <br />abandoned for non -use. Also, while over 70 years of hydrologic data indicate that the San Juan -Chama <br />Project over the long -term physically will be able to divert an average of about 105,200 acre -feet per <br />year, the Project during any given ten -year period may divert up to 135,000 acre -feet per year under the <br />Project authorization in Public Law 87 -483 depending upon availability of water. For these reasons, the <br />total amount of water rights in the San Juan River Basin in New Mexico exceeds the total amount of <br />anticipated average annual depletions shown in the depletion schedule. Also, the actual depletions in the <br />Basin in 1990 and 2000 were less than the nominal current depletions shown in the schedule. <br />2 <br />