BOARD01045

• Board Meeting Date: 7/27/1977
• Description: Agenda, Minutes, Resolution
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

government. It was submitted to a vote of the electorate in accordance
with Colorado law, and was overwhelmingly' approved by the voters of the
Tri-County District. The contract was approved by the Commissioner of
Reclamation. We assumed that there were no further problems with the
contract.

I

However, we have been advised recently that there has been a ruling made
by someone within the Interior Department that the Secretary of the
Interior will not approve the repayment contract, despite the fact that
it meets all the requirements of law, until certain subcontracts for
the use of water are executed between. the conservancy district and the'
water users; that is, the cities and the farmers and what have you.

This is a new requirement. It is not a legal requirement. We think it
is part of another delaying tactic to ~gain defeat the construction of
the Dallas Creek project. We don't understand it. Yet, that is where
the Dallas Creek project is bogged down- today"in the Secretary's Office.
The Secretary has not yet approved the repayment contract.

Whether or not we can break this deadlock, we donlt know. We will do'
everything possible to get that project under construction. The Bureau
has tendered a contract for the relocation of U. S.-Highway 550 around
the reservoir site to the State Department of Highways. That relocation
wil~ actually be done by the Colorado Department- of.Highways.

On the Dolores project, we are getting much the same run-around. For
many, many years, we have assumed that the domestic water' allocated to
the Ute Mountain Tribe would become a federal obligation under the
Leavitt Act.- This is an act of Congress which provides that the repay-
ment of those portions of reclamation projects devoted to use on Indian
reservations will be deferred. .The planning-has always proceeded on the
basis that the cost allocated to the Ute Mountain Indian Tribe would be-
deferred. _

About three weeks: ago, we were informed that the Solicitor of the
Department of the Interior had ruled that those costs could not be
deferred and that the Indians would be required to sign a letter of
intent to repay annually the cost of-municipal water.

At the present time, the Ute Mountain Indian Tribe has no adequate I
water system. Many of the Indians haul water from Cortez. The system
that they do have is at the tail-end of an irrigation ditch where a
small reservoir has been constructed. They utilize water that they get
for irrigation from the-Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company. The
Montezuma Valley Irrigation Company is no longer delivering irrigation
water. It ran out of water. for all of its customers. The company has
not delivered-any water now for over thirty days. It has cut off all

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