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<br />O{j2;~1 <br /> <br />the reservation of 5,000 miner inches of water of the river (125 cubic feet per <br /> <br />second, or about 90,000 acre-feet of water per year). <br /> <br />A variable in the Court's determination in Winters, of course, is ''the <br /> <br />purpose of the reservation" and how much water is required to satisfy that <br /> <br />purpose or purposes. According to Simms: <br /> <br />Non-Indian lawyers maintain that you must <br />conceptualize the purposes contemporaneously, i.e., to satisfy <br />comparatively modest needs. Historically, Indian reservations <br />were to have been temporary. Today, however, the Indians <br />uniformly assert that Winters provides them with enough <br />water to maintain 'a permanent tribal homeland,' a concept <br />that recently emerged from the Office of the Solicitor of <br />the Interior and is being asserted by Justice Department <br />lawyers in western water rights litigation. The Indians <br />maintain that modern development objectives should form <br />part of the basis of the determination -- recreational lakes <br />are as much within the right as traditional domestic <br />requirements. The rights, according to the Indians, are not <br />limited to agricultural needs, assuming the reservation was <br />created to teach farming, but include claims for 'fish and <br />aquatic life, irrigation, recreation, domestic, municipal, and <br />industrial uses,' as the Jicarilla Apache tribe put it in <br />another lawsuit in New Mexico. If the land was expressly <br />reserved for sheep grazing, which requires no appreciable <br />water, it would make no difference according to the Indians. <br />In the words of the Jicarillas, they have a right 'to impound <br />and/or divert . . . the entire virgin flow run-off' of the <br />Navajo River, 'from both surface and underground sources' <br />(Simms, 1979, pp. 70-70. <br /> <br />The problems associated with the very liberal interpretation of the <br /> <br />purposes for which Indian reservations were established, and of a correspondingly <br /> <br />large water right award, are easily foreseeable. Simms states: <br /> <br />While it is apparent that the potential conflicts <br />between Indian claims and non-Indian water rights may have <br />profound local effects, they may also have profound regional <br />effects. Just as the federal government was negligently <br />silent respecting water for Indian reservations, most <br />intersta te water compacts expressly disclaim any effect on <br />the water right obligations of the United States to its Indian <br /> <br />-5- <br />