WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP) – The Navajo Nation Council has signed a proposed water rights settlement that comes with a price tag bigger than such an agreement passed by Congress would provide water for two other Native American tribes in a state forced to cut back on water use .
The Navajo Nation has one of the largest outstanding claims in the Colorado River Basin. Delegates acknowledged the gravity of their vote Thursday, with many noting that securing water supplies to tribal communities has been an effort that spans generations.
“Thank you for helping make history today,” Navajo Council President Crystalyne Curley told her fellow delegates as they stood and clapped after voting unanimously.
The Hopi Tribe approved the settlement earlier this week, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Council was expected to take up the measure at a meeting Thursday. Congress will have the final say.
Congress has passed nearly three dozen tribal water rights settlements in the U.S. over the past four decades, and federal negotiating teams are working on another 22 agreements involving dozens of tribes. In this case, the Southern Paiute Navajo, Hopi and San Juan tribes are seeking more than $5 billion as part of their settlement.
About $1.75 billion of that would finance a pipeline from Lake Powell, one of the two largest reservoirs in the Colorado River system, on the Arizona-Utah border. The settlement would require the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to complete the project by the end of 2040.
From there, water would be supplied to dozens of tribal communities in remote areas.
Nearly a third of homes in the Navajo Nation — spread across 45,000 square miles of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah — have no running water. Many homes on Hopi lands are located in the same location.
A century ago, tribes were left out of a historic 1922 agreement that divided Colorado River basin water among seven Western states. Now the tribes are seeking water from a mix of sources: the Colorado River, the Little Colorado River, aquifers and washes on tribal lands in northeastern Arizona.
The latest settlement talks were driven in part by the worsening effects of climate change and demands on the river, like those that have allowed Phoenix, Las Vegas and other desert cities to flourish. The Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes hope to close the deal quickly under a Democratic government in Arizona and with Joe Biden as president.
Without a settlement, the tribes would be at the mercy of the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the federal government is not bound by treaties with the Navajo Nation to secure water for the tribe. Navajo has the largest land base of all 574 federally recognized tribes and ranks second in population with more than 400,000 residents.
A separate case that has played out over the past several decades in Arizona, above the Little Colorado River basin, will likely result in far less water than the Navajo Nation says it needs, as the tribe must prove that the water in the has used in the past. That’s hard to do when the tribe hasn’t had much access to it, said Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch.
Arizona – located in the Lower Basin of the Colorado River, along with California, Nevada and Mexico – is unique in that it also has a location in the Upper Basin. The state would gain certainty about the amount of water available because it would be forced to make cuts as the overall supply decreases.
Navajo and Hopi, like other tribes in Arizona, could be part of that solution if they secure the right to lease water within the state that could be delivered through a canal system that already serves the Tucson and Phoenix metropolitan areas.
Arizona water officials have said the leasing authority is a key part of the settlement.
