BOARD01872

• Board Meeting Date: 9/27/1999
• Description: Colorado River Basin Issues - Interior Department's Indian Water Rights Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

the east, almost to present-day Farmington, adding over one million acres south of the San Juan
River. In addition, Executive Order 709 withdrew two million acres of public domain land for
the Nav~o Reservation in New Mexico in 1908, Although most of the Executive Order 709
lands were later restored to the public domain, hundreds of 160-acre allotments were made to
individual Navajos, with most of those allotments located within the San Juan River Basin. The
Tribe claims a priority date of no later than 1849 for its water rights, based on a treaty made with
the United States in that year,

A general stream adjudication for the San Juan River in New Mexico was filed in State court by
the State of New Mexico in 1975, but the New Mexico State Engineer has given low priority to
pursuit of that adjudication. No claim has even been filed in the case by or on behalf of the
Navajo Nation.2 Because vast areas of arable Navajo lands lie within the Basin, Federal and
State officials have generally assumed that a Navajo claim, based on the practicably irrigable
acreage standard enunciated in the Supreme Court case of Arizona v. Califomi!h may require
most, ifnot all, of the water in the San Juan River. It has been the position of the State of New
Mexico that the completion of the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project (NIIP) will satisfY any Navajo
water rights claims.

Studies ofthe possibility of diverting San Juan River Basin waters across the Continental Divide
into the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio Grande, began immediately after World War I, with
surveys beginning in 1933. Meanwhile, the Navajo began looking for ways to develop their San
Juan River water rights. Many officials viewed the Navajo claim as an obstacle to major
development. The Navajo Nation eventually agreed not to block the San Juan Chama Project
(SJCP) in return for a Federal irrigation project of its own. The result was a 1962 Congressional
authorization of both the SJCP and NIIP, Public Law 87-483 (76 Stat. 96), Thus, both the
Navajo Nation and Rio Grande water users, particularly the City of Albuquerque, obtained
authorization for their projects in the same statute.' The 1962 Act authorizing NIIP and the SJCP

2 The only claim the United States has filed in the case was on behalf of the Jicarilla Apache
Tribe in 1985. Otherwise, the litigation was dormant until 1997 when the United States, New
Mexico State Engineer, and the Jicarilla Apache Tribe filed a joint motion for entry of a partial
final decree adjudicating Jicarilla Apache water rights pursuant to the Tribe's 1992 Settlement
Act. See discussion at pp. 9-10. Scheduling for the adjudication of other rights has finally begun
after 23 years.

, Contractors under the SJCP include: City of Albuquerque (48,200 acre-feet/year); Middle
Rio Grande Conservancy District (20,900 acre-feet/year); City and County of Santa Fe (5,605
acre-feet); Department of Energy (1,200 acre-feet); Pojoaque Valley Irrigation District (1,030
acre-feet); City of Espanola (1,000 acre-feet); City of Belen (500 acre-feet); Town of Taos (400
acre-feet); Village of Los Lunas (400 acre-feet); Town of Bernalillo (400 acre-feet); Town of
Red River (60 acre-feet); and the Twining Water and Sanitation District (IS acre-feet). There is
an uncontracted annual allocation of 4,990 acre-feet to be used toward Indian water rights

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