BOARD01872

• 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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DRAFT -- August 11, 1999

INTRODUCTION

As Indian tribal leaders know all too well, notwithstanding the Federal trust responsibility for
Indian-owned natural resources, Native American water resource development in the West,
particularly in the arid southwest, has historically received a much lower priority in the
Federal planning and funding for the hamessing of water resources to benefit Western
communities. It is the perception of many of those tribal leaders that, second only to
difficulties in obtaining necessary financing from Federal appropriations, a major obstacle to
current efforts to develop water resources for use on Indian lands is implementation of the
ESA by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Tribal leaders in the southwest see no
environmental justice in treating the effects of past federally-subsidized non-Indian
development as the baseline against which the effects of Indian water development on listed
species and their habitat must be measured. Indeed, it is often the case that the non-Indian
development has been the principal cause of the ecosystem degradation which resulted in the
listing of native fish, wildlife, and plant species as endangered or threatened pursuant to the
ESA.

Congress passed the Endangered Species Act in 1973. Section 7 of the Act:

a) imposes an obligation on all Federal agencies to "utilize their authorities in
furtherance of the purposes of this Act by carrying out programs for the conservation
of endangered and threatened species ...." S 7(a)(l); and

b) requires that each Federal agency "insure that any action authorized, funded, or
carried out ... is not likely to jeopardize the continued existence of any endangered or
threatened species or result in the destruction or adverse modification of (critical)
habitat. ..." S 7(a)(2).

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