Arizona tribes seek to lease, conserve river water
As Arizona tribal leaders prepare to take a greater role in a regional forum on Colorado River issues, a new bill to allow at least one tribe to lease water is making its way through Congress, while another tribe tries to forestall further cuts to water delivery.
The tribes are increasingly concerned that a persistent drought, worsened by a 20-year-long period of hotter and drier conditions in the Southwest, has already led to the federal government’s first-ever shortage declaration for Arizona water users. One tribe is worried that it may be asked to reduce its own water deliveries.
Jason Hauter of the law firm Akin Gump, which represents the Gila River Indian Community, said the only sure way to deal with increasingly dire conditions on the Colorado River is to reduce demand. But there’s another facet to the tribe’s desire to conserve water, he said.
“Gila River is the one tribe that has a large entitlement, that in times of shortage is not 100% firm,” he said. “So it has an incentive to do more to protect its supply.”
Tribes expect to play a key role at a gathering of more than 1,000 water managers, government leaders and policymakers beginning Tuesday at the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference in Las Vegas.
Tribal leaders and representatives will be on hand and ready to discuss issues ranging from projections on snowpack to the effects climate change is expected to have on future water flow, as well as legislation and new, innovative ways to adapt to a drier Southwest.
In advance of the conference, Sen. Mark Kelly, DAriz., introduced the Colorado River Indian Tribes Water Resiliency Act of 2021 which, if enacted, would allow the Colorado River Indian Tribes — known as CRIT — to lease part of its Arizona water allocation to offreservation users. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., signed on as a co-sponsor of the bill.
The 4,600-member tribe has senior rights to 719,248 acre-feet of the Colorado’s flow. Currently, CRIT farms about 84,500 of its 300,000-acre reservation straddling the Colorado River, with another 50,000 acres available for development, according to the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona.
CRIT Farms produces crops such as alfalfa, sorghum, cotton, wheat, potatoes, garlic and onions. The tribal community has engaged in agriculture for millennia, and its farm operations play a major role in the tribe’s economy.
The tribe has long wanted to lease part of its water allocation, said CRIT Chairwoman Amelia Flores. She told The Arizona Republic that tribal members authorized the proposal in 2019 through a ballot referendum.
If the bill passes, CRIT plans to offer water saved from fallowing some fields, moving to less water-intensive crops and installing efficient delivery systems.
“This legislation protects the life of the river, protects Arizona’s fragile groundwater resources, and, for the first time in more than 156 years, allows our people to receive the full benefit from our water rights,” said Flores in a statement.
At least one other Arizona tribe would like to see that bill expanded to include more tribes. Gila River Indian Community Governor Stephen Roe Lewis said his tribe does not support the bill as written because it would give CRIT an unfair advantage over other tribes in the Colorado River basin. He told The Republic he intends to work with the delegation and other river tribes to include communities with river allocations.
New conservation measures at Gila River
Concerned by the ongoing drought in the Southwest and dropping water levels in Lake Mead, Gila River and other Arizona tribes with river allocations have turned to conservation protocols to forestall more drastic shortage declarations.
Gila River has announced several initiatives to conserve water. The 21,000-member tribe, which has a 640-square-mile reservation just south of Chandler, has a centuries-long agricultural history. The tribe was deprived of its Gila River water for more than a century, but a historic 2004 water settlement restored senior water rights.
Since then, the tribal community has been rebuilding its tribal farm operation and constructing a modern water delivery system to supply communities and small tribal member-owned farms.
The 2004 agreement called for Gila River to accept an annual allocation of 311,800 acre-feet from the Colorado River in lieu of restoring the Gila’s flow. But some of that water could be vulnerable to drought cutbacks.
Hauter, the attorney, told the governor’s drought interagency group in November that the tribe’s non-Indian agricultural water allocation could be decreased or completely cut without tribal intervention.
Gila River and CRIT, among other governments, have voluntarily left part of their annual allocations in Lake Mead to help keep reservoir levels from triggering drought restrictions, which would reduce not only the tribe’s but the entire state’s annual distribution in future years.
The Bureau of Reclamation declared a Tier 1 shortage for calendar year 2022, which according to the Central Arizona Project will result in the loss of about 30% of Central Arizona Project’s normal supply and nearly 18% of Arizona’s total Colorado River supply.
Lewis told The Republic that Gila River Farms, the tribal-owned farm, would begin fallowing land to conserve water. Hauter, who is also a Gila River tribal member, said the farm would be asked to fallow up to 4,000 acres.
Lewis said the tribe would also initiate a pilot program to cover some of its canals with solar panels. The project would both reduce evaporation from the open canals and would generate energy for some communities in Gila River, he said.
Hauter told the interagency drought group that since 2016, Gila River has left some of its river allocation in Lake Mead to keep water levels above drought triggers, and by 2022, the tribe will have contributed 540,000 acre-feet.
Lewis also said Friday that the tribe had signed an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation for about $72 million in new funding to speed up construction of the community’s irrigation projects. The previous appropriation was $20 million, Lewis said.
The agreement was enacted on the anniversary of the 2004 water settlement and is part of a $2.5 billion Indian water rights completion fund that was included in the bipartisan infrastructure law signed by President Joe Biden in November.
Many of Arizona’s tribal water settlements are funded through the Lower Colorado River Basin Development Fund. But tribes have long been worried that the fund was insufficient to allow tribes to turn their “paper water” into “wet water” and create sustainable
water systems for homes, businesses and other community needs.
Debra Krol reports on Indigenous communities at the confluence of climate, culture and commerce in Arizona and the Intermountain West. Reach Krol at debra.krol@azcentral.com. Follow her on Twitter at @debkrol.
Coverage of Indigenous issues at the intersection of climate, culture and commerce is supported by the Catena Foundation.