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BOARD01872
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Last modified
8/16/2009 3:08:15 PM
Creation date
10/4/2006 7:04:05 AM
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Board Meetings
Board Meeting Date
9/27/1999
Description
Colorado River Basin Issues - Interior Department's Indian Water Rights Report
Board Meetings - Doc Type
Memo
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<br />JICARILLA APACHE <br /> <br />The Jicarilla Apache Indian Reservation, straddling the Continental Divide in northwestern New <br />Mexico, was created by a series of Executive Orders between 1874 and 1887. The only <br />perennial stream on the reservation is the Navajo River, a tributary to the San Juan River. <br />Beginning in the 1930's and during the ensuing decades when the conceptual plans for the SJCP <br />evolved, the Jicarilla Apache Tribe sought an irrigation project on the reservation as part of the <br />SJCP transmountain diversion, The "Dulce Project" component of the SJCP never occurred. <br />When the SJCP began operations in 1972, the SJCP diverted approximately 52 percent of the <br />average annual flow of the Navajo River upstream from the Tribe's reservation. <br /> <br />Beginning in 1975, the Tribe filed a number oflawsuits to assert its rights and thwart the Federal <br />projects and project contracts which the Tribe viewed as a threat to its assertion of its own water <br />rights, In one of the lawsuits, the Tribe sought damages against the United States for inverse <br />condemnation of the Tribe's Navajo River water rights, due to the construction and operation of <br />the SJCP, In another lawsuit, the Tribe sought specific performance of an alleged contractual <br />obligation between the Tribe and the Secretary of the Interior for a perpetual water supply. In <br />that suit, the Tribe asserted that the Department of the Interior failed to honor its obligation to the <br />Tribe by continuing to issue water supply contracts at Navajo Reservoir to other users in the San <br />Juan River Basin, Settlement negotiations between the Tribe and the United States began in <br />1985. That same year, the United States filed a reserved right claim for 120,000 acre-feet of <br />water on the Tribe's behalf in the San Juan River general stream adjudication. However, no <br />claims had been filed by the United States on behalf of the Tribe or by the Tribe for the waters in <br />the Rio Chama general stream adjudication, <br /> <br />A theme of the Tribe's suits and the ensuing settlement negotiations was whether there remained <br />enough water out of New Mexico's allocation under the Upper Colorado River Basin Compact to <br />provide the Tribe's reservation with a permanent supply. The Tribe asserted that Reclamation <br />and the New Mexico State Engineer had ignored the Tribe's claims in planning for future use of <br />San Juan River Basin waters. A solution was found in an updated hydrology study which <br />resulted in the submission by the Secretary of the Interior of a new hydrologic determination to <br />Congress on February 2, 1989. This determination added 22,500 acre-feet to New Mexico's <br />permanent allocation, thereby making this water available for development. This amount was <br />used as a major contribution to a settlement of all of the Tribe's federally reserved water right <br />claims since it focused the negotiations upon an otherwise uncommitted water supply, <br /> <br />The Jicarilla Apache Water Rights Settlement Act of October 23, 1992 (106 Stat. 2237), provides <br />the Tribe the right to divert 6,500 acre-feet of SJCP water annually from Heron Reservoir and the <br />right to divert 33,500 acre-feet annually from Navajo Reservoir or the Navajo River, of which <br />25,500 acre-feet may be depleted. Pursuant to the terms ofthe Settlement Contract between the <br /> <br />9 <br />
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