WSPC02962

• File Number: 8064
• Description: Indian Water Rights
• State: CO
• Basin: San Juan/Dolores
• Date: 4/4/1986
• Title: Briefing Paper in Support of the Agreement in Principle of March 14, 1986
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Publication

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Colorado River. That 1968 commitment also guaranteed fair
treatment for both Upper Basin Indian and non-Indian users of
Colorado River waters.

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PART THREE

The Agreement in Principle accomplishes a final
quantification of the Ute Indian Tribes' Winters Rights water
claims.

The national commitment to the Ute Indians emerges not only
from national legislation designed to develop Colorado River
waters, but also from a series of earlier federal laws -- the
Treaty of October 7, 1863, the Treaty of March 2, 1868, and the
Act of February 20, 1895. Each of these Congressional enactments
was designed to protect and preserve a portion of the lands and
waters of the Upper Colorado River Basin for a permanent homeland
for the Ute Indian people. This one hundred year national
commitment to provide a permanent homeland to the Ute Indians
containing sufficient water resources has been mirrored by a mera
recent national commitment to the Tribes and to the non-Indian
citizens of Colorado and New Mexico to develop the Upper Basin's
share of Colorado River water.

The Agreement in Principle quantifies and satisfies once and
for all the Winters rights claims of the Tribes. Thus, the Ute
Mountain Ute Tribe is to receive a total. of 84,500 acre feet of
water from the following sources: Dolores River through the
Dolores Project; the Animas and La Plata Rivers through the
Animas-La Plata Project; and direct flow water rights on the
Mancos River, Navajo Wash and the San Juan River.

Similarly, the Agreement in Principle provides for the
Southern Ute Indian Tribe to obtain 41,126 acre feet from the
following sources; Animas and La Plata Rivers through the
Animas-La Plata Project; and direct flow water rights from
numerous river sources flowing through non-Indian and Indian
lands in Southwest Colorado including the Florida, Piedra, and
San Juan Rivers.

Once these sources of water are fully quantified in
contracts for project water and in judicial proceedings, the
Agreement in Principle provides for the extinguishment of all
other historical claims by the Tribes under federal law and
relating to the quantification of Tribal waters. Indeed, a
principal motivating factor for the Agreement in Principle is the
desire to quantify and resolve the Winters rights water claims of
the Tribes through an amicable, efficient, and inexpensive
settlement process rather than undertaking what Indian and non-
Indians have seen elsewhere in the West -- namely, time consuming
and prohibitively expensive quantification litigation.

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