BOARD01303

• Board Meeting Date: 1/14/1960
• Description: Minutes
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Meeting

1780

get tired of hearing me talk about these
Indians - maybe you already have - but that
language which is found in that paragraph is
excellent so far as it goes. However, I am
fearful that it doesn't go far enough and I
am arso questioning whether my suggestion can
be carried out.

, I want to talk about something other than
the Indian lands involved in the Navajo Proj-
ect or in the State of New Mexico. I am assum-
ing that the United States Supreme Court will
go along with the Department of Justice - and
that may be an erroneous assumption but I think
we have to assume it for safety's sake - that
the rights of water for the irrigation of In-
dian reservation lands are rights which came
into existence coincidentally with the creation
of the reservation. Now if that proposition is
written into law by the United States~Supreme
Court, then when applied to the San Juan it will
mean this: that not only in connection with
Navajo lands in New Mexico but all other Indian
reservation lands, physically susceptible of
irrigation by Colorado River water, not .San Juan
water alone, but Colorado River water, have a
preference, or we would say if we were talking
about rights in Colorado, it is senior to any
other right on the river which has come into
existence or vested subsequently to the date
of the creation of that Indian reservation.

To pinpoint a little bit more what I am
thinking about, down below the Davis Dam on the
lower river, there is the Colorado Indian Reser-
vation where they are presently operating diver-
sion from the Colorado River by means of the
Headgate Walk Dam - I believe that is the name
of it. That Indian reservation is a large one.
There is a lot of land, as I understand it and
that would have to be verified, not now being
irrigated but can be irrigated by means of an
enlargement of that diversion. Now if the
Supreme Court adopts that proposition I spoke
of a moment ago, it would mean that water for
the irrigation of those Indian lands in the
Colorado Indian Reservation, clear down in
Arizona and below Lee Ferry, would have a right
senior to even the vested rights on the San
Juan River above the Navajo Dam in Colorado and
New Mexico.

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