Tribal leaders steer the Colorado River conversation
Amanda Pampuro
BOULDER, Colo. (CN) — Forty million people living in the southwest U.S. and Mexico depend on the Colorado River, including 30 Native American tribes, which were excluded from negotiations when the Colorado River Compact was signed in 1922.
Although indigenous tribes lay claim to a quarter of the river’s water and the century-old compact promised not to alter “the obligations of the United States of America to Indian Tribes,” each tribal government has been left alone to pursue development and enforcement of their rights.
Representatives of four indigenous tribes with claims to Colorado River water recalled recent successes and stalemates in a panel discussion at the 45th Colorado Law Conference on Natural Resources on Friday.
“Until you have qualified, settled, adjudicated rights, it’s hard to bring water to the table,” said Bidtah Becker, legal counsel for the Navajo Nation Office of the President.
One effort to end a century-old water dispute among three tribes and the Grand Canyon State culminated in the Northeastern Indian Arizona Water Rights Settlement this year. While the agreement would fund $5 billion in much-needed water infrastructure projects and provide water security to nearly 200,000 people living on Arizona reservations, the pact still needs approval from the seven basin states and Congress to move forward.
Nevertheless, Becker credited the “big beautiful” project’s momentum on the treaties first negotiated between the Hopi, Navajo, and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes, and then brought to the state.
“This is a classic Indian settlement for clean drinking water,” Becker said.
State borders pose an additional challenge for tribal nations whose territories overlap the right-angles of the U.S. map of the west.
Although the Mountain Ute settled water rights with Colorado three decades ago, unresolved claims in Utah and New Mexico prevent the tribe from collecting its promised water.
Peter Oretego, attorney for Mountain Ute tribe, said that pursuing such settlements has meant agreeing to share in the shortages just as much as obtaining water security.
“When it secured its water rights in Colorado, one of the concessions it made was that it would share in the shortages,” Oretego said. When water shortages impact Mountain Ute farms, Oretego said, the cuts hit not individual farmers but the entire tribe, since profits are distributed across the community.
“When that farm couldn’t earn that revenue that year, it has a serious impact on the community,” Oretego said.
Another barrier for many tribal nations, including the Mountain Ute, is that current pacts only compensate water users for cutting use and do not compensate for undeveloped rights that others are benefiting from. To benefit from these incentive programs, the Mountain Ute would have to first develop infrastructure to pull water from the river and then stop using it.
Under the current system, Oretego said, “There are people using the tribe’s water, who themselves can participate in a conservation program, and one of them can say ‘I will no longer use the water in the river,’ and then get compensated for it, but the tribe can’t do that.”
At the same time, the conservation model does benefit other tribes, who cut back active water use. The Quechan Indian Tribe, which borders California, Arizona and Mexico, agreed to conserve 30,000 acre-feet of water in 2023 in exchange for compensation from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Looking at future proposals, the Quechan tribe’s attorney, Jay Weiner, said members are skeptical of agreements that only promise to store water on paper, while actually dolling it out to other users, since Quechan farmers need actual water to reach lower basin reservations.
As each indigenous nation differs in size, location, history and culture, so do their needs from the river.
“If you know one tribe, then you know one tribe,” Weiner quipped. “But a lot of our needs can be Venn diagramed.”
While the Quechan would suffer most under prorate cuts, members of the Gila River Indian Community shudder at the thought of facing priority cuts.
The reality on the Colorado River, however, is that the future holds less water for everyone. With global temperatures expected to increase and the region already undergoing aridification, stakeholders continue to debate how to sustain larger western populations with less water.
With negotiations ongoing for key agreements that expire next year, many stakeholders say updated governing documents must reflect modern environmental and industrial strains on the river, as well as the historical wrong of excluding native tribes from water policymaking.
Jason Hauter, attorney for the Gila River Indian Community, envisions a future where the tribe of 14,000 resumes reliance on their eponymous river for sustenance, and divorces itself from the Colorado River.
“Aridification is happening, and it’s really about trying to find ways to rely less on Colorado River Water,” Hauter said.
Hauter sees no way to avoid making cuts in water use.
“Risk and crisis will change people’s attitudes," he said. "As we enter into poor hydrology, we need to make bigger cuts.”