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<br />;~WfJ <br /> <br /> <br />III 6 <br /> <br />San Juan-ChsmIl Project <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />-;;-.;.----1 <br />'.~' .y~ <br /> <br />San Juan-Chama Project <br /> <br />Nsmbe Falls Dam and storage reservoir provide sup- <br />plemental irrigation water for tbe Pojoaque Valley Irriga- <br />tion District and Indian pueblos of San Ildefonso, <br />Nambe, and Pojoaque. The dam is a concrete and earth <br />embankment structure ISO feet high which forms a reser- <br />voir with a capacity of 2,023 acre-feet. <br /> <br />Anasazi development, but climatic conditions and the <br />influx of the ancestors of the modem Navajo and Ute In- <br />dians limited pueblo development. Spanish exploration in <br />the area is known as early as the search for gold in 1765, <br />with settlellIent later in the century. Reports by trappers <br />in the 1820's brought prospectors and miners, and even- <br />tually permanent settlers. <br /> <br />DEVELOPMENT <br /> <br />Investigations <br /> <br />Early History <br /> <br />Studies of the possibility of diverting San Juan River <br />Basin waters into the Rio Chama, a tributary of the Rio <br />Grande, began immediately following the first World <br />War, but surveys of the leatures involved began in 1933, <br />with the Bunger Survey. This survey was resumed in <br />1936, as a part of the Rio Grande Joint Investigations, to <br />determine the need lor the project. <br /> <br />The investigations establisbed the basis for recognizing, <br />in the Rio Grande Compact, the possibility of a trans- <br />mountain diversion to bring water from the San Juan <br />River into the Rio Grande Basin. The Colorado River <br />Basin report, issued by the Bureau of Reclamation. in <br />1946, established the quantity of water that was con- <br /> <br />ThrOIlgh prehistoric Indian activity at Sandia Cave <br />northeast of Alhuquerque, pueblo communities estab- <br />lished before 600 A.D., Spanish settlement in 1598, and <br />the homesteading development in the late 1840's, the Rio <br />Grande Valley has accommodated and nurtured man. <br />The waters provided by the San Juan.Chama Project <br />flow to the descendants of these cultures, helping to con- <br />tinue the varied lifestyles represented. <br /> <br />Along the upper San Juan River drainage, the projeet's <br />water source, a similar settlement pattern, with varia- <br />tions, developed. A desert culture base underlay the <br />