SOUTHERN UTE RESERVATION — If federal officials want tribal support for Colorado River deals, they need to pay tribes to conserve, protect their future water use and include them in negotiations, tribal leaders said Wednesday at a conference in southwestern Colorado.
Basin states and the federal government are negotiating a new set of operating rules to replace existing drought-response agreements that expire in 2026. Tribes weren’t included when the agreements were originally negotiated in 2007. Basin officials should not make the same mistake again, tribes say.
“It’s our job as leaders to champion for our people and to ensure that our water is sustainable for the long term,” Lorelei Cloud, vice chairman of the Southern Ute Indian Tribal Council, said Wednesday during the Southwestern Water Conservation District’s annual seminar on the Southern Ute Reservation. “For us to be left out is not acceptable any longer.”
The current drought-response agreements focus on how water is stored and released from Lake Powell, on the Utah-Arizona border, and Lake Mead, on the Nevada-Arizona border.
This Fresh Water News story is a collaboration between The Colorado Sun and Water Education Colorado. It also appears at wateredco.org/fresh-water-news.
The enormous reservoirs represent 92% of the entire basin’s storage capacity and are central to how water is delivered from four Upper Basin states — Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — to the Lower Basin states of Arizona, California and Nevada.
The rivers, reservoirs, tunnels and ditches in the 246,000-square-mile Colorado River Basin help provide water to 40 million people across the West. The 30 tribal nations in the Colorado River Basin have rights to about 26% of the Colorado River’s average flow of 12.44 million acre-feet per year between 2000 and 2018.
One acre-foot roughly equals the annual use of two to three households.
This month, upper and lower basin states submitted two competing proposals about how reservoirs should be managed after 2026. The submissions are part of a long federal process to adapt operations to an uncertain climate future in a drought-stressed river basin.
In the Upper Basin proposal, Colorado and its partners committed to upholding their water-sharing obligations, and exploring voluntary, temporary and compensated conservation programs. If reservoir storage dropped to certain trigger levels, Lower Basin states would cut their water use by up to 3.9 million acre-feet.
The Lower Basin agreed to plenty of water cuts in its proposal. But if the amount of storage in seven basin reservoirs falls below 38% of the total capacity, every state in the basin, including Colorado, would need to cut its water use.
Neither of the proposals did enough to advocate for tribes, Cloud said during a panel at the seminar, which gathered about 250 water watchers at the Sky Ute Casino Resort.
“The Upper Basin and Lower Basin submitted proposals, but there’s not very good language or hard language saying that tribes are going to be included,” Cloud said. “We’re taking harder stances in making sure that we’re included in those conversations.”
The Upper Basin proposal acknowledged that some tribal water rights have been legally settled but the water is not actively being used.
“I think maybe we should have said it more explicitly or said it in other documentation,” said Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s top negotiator on Colorado River issues. “It’s that keeping of trust that’s going to be critical in moving the needle forward in the Upper Basin. Because I think we can change things.”
A letter from tribes, sent March 11, laid out a list of requirements for the Bureau of Reclamation.
The federal government must uphold its legal responsibilities to protect tribal water rights, the letter says. That includes consulting with tribes and analyzing any impacts to tribal water that might result from interstate deals.
It also means rejecting any plans that would cap tribes’ ability to put their water to use for farms, homes and industries.
This is a big deal for the Ute Mountain Ute and Southern Ute tribes. Both have rights to water in Lake Nighthorse, a reservoir near Durango in southwestern Colorado, but they haven’t been able to put the water to use, in part, because they would have to build expensive pipelines and pay costly fees to deliver it to their communities.
That delivery system is the top priority for the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, Chairman Manuel Heart said.
But if states agree to a cap on development, it could cut off tribes’ ability to put that water to use in the future. And when water flows past the tribes’ reservations, it eventually ends up in the Lower Basin, where farmers are paid to conserve water.
Tribes, however, are not paid for allowing it to flow downstream. Compensating tribes for not using their water, and for choosing to cut back on the water they do use, is another key point in the letter.
“We haven’t been able to develop our water, and we plan to fully develop our water in the Upper Basin,” Cloud said. “That means that those individuals that have been reliant on our undeveloped, settled water, eventually they’re not going to have that water to use any longer.”
The letter also said tribes must be permanently and formally included in the post-2026 negotiations if tribes are expected to support the interstate agreements. At the very least, anything that formally triggers consulting with states should also trigger discussions with tribes, the letter said.
Upper Basin tribes have nearly gained a new, long-awaited foothold in the discussions. Under a new agreement, tribes would be formally and permanently included in discussions with the Upper Colorado River Commission, an interstate board that includes representatives from the four states. Tribes would not gain a voting seat on the commission.
The commission approved the agreement, and tribal nations are expected to vote on it in April or May. If approved, it will be the first agreement of its kind between the commission and Upper Basin tribes.
“We’re fighting tirelessly because we want to make sure that future generations have the water,” Cloud said. “They (our ancestors) gave up their lives for us to be here today, so we’re going to continue doing that for our future generations to ensure they have what they need to thrive.”