The largest proposed tribal water rights settlement in U.S. history continues to stall, leaving many Native American families without reliable access to running water despite having longstanding legal rights to the Colorado River. KUNM talked with reporters Alex Hager with KJZZ and ProPublica’s Mark Olalde. Hager said there are 30 tribes who have legal access to a quarter of the river’s flow.
ALEX HAGER: But most of them do not have the infrastructure or money to use the full amount that they're owed, and as a result, a lot of Indigenous people throughout the Colorado River Basin are not using water that they're legally owed. They don't have clean drinking water coming to their houses, and instead, that water is getting used elsewhere in the system. So we have 40 million people living in major cities across the West, a huge multi-billion dollar agriculture industry that is benefiting from the fact that the tribes are not using as much water as they theoretically could. So because of that, if they decided to start using all of their water all at once, if they somehow had the means, it would be a big problem for the rest of the West, and because of that, the federal government creates these settlement deals. It's sort of a compromise where the tribes agree to use less water than they might be legally owed, and in exchange they get a big payment from the government. So in this case we have potentially the largest tribal water settlement in U.S. history, and it would deliver $5 billion to these three tribes: the Navajo Nation, the Hopi tribe, and the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe. It would also create the first ever land reservation for the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe. So it could deliver generational change. These $5 billion would be used partially to construct a pipeline that could get running water to people who currently, in the year 2026 do not have sinks, toilets, and showers in their homes.
KUNM: Alex, how does this settlement involve so many other states?
HAGER: Basically, the Colorado River is used by seven states, and traditionally they are divided into two groups: you've got the Upper Basin of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin of Arizona, California, and Nevada. The actual Colorado River Basin is divided by a squiggly line that is more a product of geology than humans putting political lines on a map, and because of that, there are some things that don't fall so neatly to either side, and in this case, that is the Navajo Nation. It is the only tribe that straddles that line. Some of its land is in the Upper Basin, and some of its land is in the Lower Basin, and that's at the heart of the problem here. The Navajo Nation, as part of the settlement, would also get the right to lease some of its water off reservation, and that could be a major economic engine, right? But those Upper Basin states see it as a threat. Because the Navajo Nation falls on both sides of that squiggly line, if they are leasing water to cities in the Lower Basin, there's some fear that they could be taking water that, quote, unquote, belongs to the Upper Basin, taking it out of the amount that the Upper Basin needs to meet its legal requirements for sending water downstream, and then give it, for a price, to those cities in the Lower Basin. So this is a product of more than 100 years of Colorado River politics that has been supercharged by the current situation we're in. These states are all negotiating the future of how the river gets used, and because there is less water to go around due to climate change and drought, they have gotten really tense.
KUNM: Mark, how is the federal government involved?
OLALDE: This entire system goes back to a Supreme Court case that was decided in 1908 that gave tribes the right to water as part of the federal government's trust responsibility, and so when we see these types of settlements blocked in the year 2026 it's not just a question of who's blocking it now? It's a question of why has it been blocked for 118 years?
So on one part of the government, is the Department of the Interior, they're actually representing the tribes in some of these negotiations. On the other hand, because this is an agreement that would need federal funding, and it's an agreement between sovereign nations, between the United States government and three tribes, it needs sign off from Congress. Now, the great irony of the Upper Basin and Lower Basin fight here is it's an open legal question whether the Upper Basin even needs to sign off, because all of the water is theoretically Arizona water. Now that said, there is sort of a gentleman's agreement, I guess we could call it that this sort of thing won't be decided unless all seven states come to a consensus agreement.
KUNM: What else is holding this settlement back, Alex?
HAGER: Things are so touchy on the Colorado River that any time there's something that could theoretically lead to a slippery slope, that could someday impinge on someone's water rights, there is a great degree of concern from the people who fear that they are the ones that are going to be impinged upon, and so that's what's happening here. There's a fear that what Navajo is doing could create a precedent, and Navajo and outside experts both say this cannot create a precedent. We heard from Buu Nygren, the president of Navajo Nation. He testified in front of a Senate committee and said “this cannot possibly create a precedent because we are the only tribe that straddles both sides of that Basin line,” and the experts I talked to agreed with that.
KUNM: Mark, have the tribes tried offering a counter agreement in response to this precedent?
OLALDE: The tribes put on the table a pretty major concession, which was to limit the time and the volume of water they would lease to Lower Basin cities. The idea there being giving the Upper Basin certainty that this wouldn't lead to that precedent of which they're so fearful. Now that wasn't enough to get this over the finish line, so it's kind of a question of what, what would be enough? Nygren said, ‘Listen, the goal of this leasing is to give us bridge financing’, help actually lower the cost of the overall settlement by making money off of the leasing to then turn around and use that money to help build some of the infrastructure, and then once that infrastructure is built, and we can use the water on the reservations, we can build businesses, attract more of an economy to the reservations, then we will stop that leasing.
KUNM: What do you hope your readers take away from this Mark?
OLALDE: I'll just point to what the tribes decided to name the main pipeline that would bring this water. It's a mashup of Diné and Hopi words that if my understanding is correct means “For Life,” in Diné and “Water is Life,” in Hopi, and that's really how these tribes are viewing this settlement. None of these tribes asked for the reservation system and the governance system that was thrust upon them. They're essentially saying we were here first, and we're still at the back of the line. We're looking for something, and I don't know if our readers and our listeners in some parts of the country really even have a concept of what it means to want to boil some water for dinner or wash your hands, and that's not walking to the kitchen that's going to a bucket or getting in your truck and driving to a well somewhere, it's an entirely, different lifestyle, and so really, what the tribes tried to impress upon us was they're not asking for the moon here, they're asking for some water.
Find a link to their reporting at KUNM.org. Support for this coverage comes from Thornburg Foundation.
