WSPC02585

• File Number: 8064
• Description: Indian Water Rights
• State: CO
• Basin: San Juan/Dolores
• Water Division: 7
• Date: 3/17/1997
• Author: Todd M Olinger
• Title: Summary of Indian Water 1997
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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II 0 IF;

Session I: Western Water Trends and Directions

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With few exceptions, the projects were planned and built by the federal
government without any attempt to define, let alone protect, prior rights
that Indian tribes might have ha~ in the waters for the projects!

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Thus, much western water development has occurred at the expense of
tribes. So the tribes have involuntarily subsidized non, Indian development
of the very streams claimed by them. It was for this reason that the
National Water Commission concluded that, "In the history of the United
States government's treatment of Indian tribes, its failure to protect Indian
water rights for the use of the reservations it aside for them is one the of the
sorrier chapters. ".

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Today, tribes cannot make a convincing case that Congress should spend
obscene amounts of money to build big, lavish, and wasteful projects on their
behalf. But they do have a strong, equitable case for serious consideration of
their needs for construction funds. Many tribes lack adequate or potable
drinking water supplies. On some reservations, only non-Indians get the
benefit of so-called Indian irrigation projects. In most of Indian country
there are no irrigation projects at all. To develop tribal agricultural water
would be to give reality to the tribes' paper claims to water.

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Of course, delivery of wet water to tribes could cut into the supplies for non-
Indians who have junior rights, especially in dry years. Is this a reason not
to proceed with projects for tribes? We must ask whether a senior non-
Indian appropriator would hesitate to develop and use water just because it
would harm the value or reliability of a junior appropriator's supply? Of
course not. So why should the United States-the trustee for Indian land
and water-hesitate to give value to Indian water rights because it would
lessen the value of non-Indian water uses? It is contrary to the way non-
Indian appropriators think about developing and using their rights, and it is
contrary to the fiduciary obligations of the government to Indian tribes to
hesitate to develop Indian water just to protect junior water rights holders.

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In some cases, tribes can also benefit from existing federal water
development-obviating the need to build new projects. There is a trend
toward reoperating and re,tooling existing facilities to accomplish new
purposes, such as fish and wildlife and recreation. As the Bureau of
Reclamation and other federal agencies consider how to make uses of
projects that were not contemplated when the projects were built, solving
Indian water problems should be high on their list of possible new uses.
These facilities were built for a different era, but they now have the potential

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, See U,S. National Water Commission, WATER POLICIES FOR THE FuTuRE: FiNAL REpORT
TO THE PRESIDENT AND TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 474,75 (1973).
, [d.

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