BOARD00017

• Board Meeting Date: 7/13/1998
• Description: Colorado River Basin Issues - Colorado River Commissioner's Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

UTE MOUNTAIN UTE TRIBE

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SOUTHERN UTE INDIAN TRIBE

July 8, 1998

The Honorable William J. Clinton
President of the United States
Executive Office of the President
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. :
Washington, D.C. 20500

Re: S.1771 - Colorado Ute Settlement Act Amendments of 1998

Dear President Clinton:

.

On June 24, 1998, Commissioner Eluid Martinez of the Bureau of Reclamation testified in front of
the Senate Indian Affairs Committee that your Administration was "strongly opposed" to S. 1771.
The Administration's disappointing and surprising position on S. 1771 breaks the United States'
promise first made in 1868 and continned in 1988 that the Ute Tribes would have the water
needed to ensure that the Ute Mountain and Southern Ute Indian Reservations would survive as a
permanent homeland for the Ute people.

Ten years ago, Congress passed the Colorado Ute Indian Water Rights Settlement Act of 1988
which called for the construction of Phase I of the Animas-La Plata Project in order to settle the
tribal claims on the Animas and La Plata Rivers. Phase I of the Project would have provided water
to Indians and lion-Indians in southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico. The foundation
for the legislation was the 1986 Settlement Agreement that was signed by representatives of the
Departments of the Interior and Justice as well as the State of Colorado and the two Ute Tribes.

.

Since the passage of the Settlement Act in 1988, our Tribes have worked with the Department of
the Interior to begin construction of the Project. Numerous obstacles have been placed in our way
but the Tribes have overcome those difficulties. For example, in 1991, when the Fish and Wildlife
Service reversed its 1979 position tha(the Project would not adversely affect the endangered
Colorado River Squawfish, the Tribes joined with the states of New Mexico and Colorado, the
Navajo Nation, the Jicarilla Apache Tribe, and local water users to fonn the San Juan River
Recovery Implementation Program, which has as its goal recovery of the endangered fish. As a
result, the Service approved construction of the three project facilities that are encompassed in
S. 1771 and approved the 57, I 00 acre feet of depletion that form the basis for the modified
settlement.