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Mesa Indigenous Support
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By Jim Snyder/The Daily Times
Jan 6, 2005
FARMINGTON — New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission Chairman Jim Dunlap
said he was unaware of any concerns Navajo allottees had about the Navajo water
rights settlement on the San Juan Basin.
Dunlap, who is also a San Juan Water Commission member representing the San
Juan Rural Water Users Association, made his comments during a commission
meeting Wednesday in Farmington.
Ervin Chavez, president of the Navajo Shii Shii Keyah Navajo Allottees
Association, said in a phone interview Wednesday his organization has decided to
prepare an injunction on the settlement to be filed in U.S. District Court in
Albuquerque.
Chavez said last week the settlement does not protect the water rights of
35,000 Navajos who live on federal allotted lands off the Navajo reservation
from the Huerfano, Nageezi and Counselor areas in the north to the Crownpoint
area in the south.
The ISC will vote on the settlement during its Jan. 12 meeting at the
Farmington Civic Center, Dunlap said. If passed, the settlement will move forward
to the state attorney general’s office and to Governor Richardson for
signatures. It still needs to be passed by the New Mexico 11th Judicial District
Court — in a process that could take a decade — as well as the U.S. Congress.
The Navajo Council passed the settlement, in a 62-18 vote, Dec. 29 in Window
Rock, Ariz.
Dunlap, in an oral report to the commission, said he worked on the
settlement for 11 years and never heard any problems from Navajo allottees.
“I was not aware of this,” Dunlap said in response to a question by
Commission Chairman Mark Duncan, who represents San Juan County. “The checkerboard
area is administered under different federal trust laws. There is language in
the agreement. There is water for those lands.”
The settlement, reached in closed-door negotiations between the New Mexico
Office of the State Engineer and the Navajo government, was publicly released
by State Engineer John D’Antonio Dec. 5, 2003.
Dunlap said he would not share his brief written report on the settlement
with the commission until after the Jan. 12 ISC vote, responding to a request
by Commissioner Lynne Raner, who represents Bloomfield. “They can pass it,
table it, fail to take action on it,” he said, or vote against it, he added.
Navajo allottees, who live on federal trust land off the eastern border of
the Navajo reservation, are under the jurisdiction of the Department of the
Interior and not the Navajo government or the state of New Mexico. The water
settlement, in its present form, puts those allottees under the thumb of all
three, Chavez said last week, adding that infringed upon their jurisdictional
rights.
The settlement would also hand over Navajo allottee water rights — beyond
their historical use — to the Navajo government in Window Rock, Ariz., and the
New Mexico state engineer in Santa Fe, Chavez said. While the Navajo
government chose to yield part of its historical water rights into the hands of a
state government, the Navajo allottees did not have that choice, he added.
The complex settlement — totaling more than 200 pages — would adjudicate 56
percent of the basin’s water supply — 606,060 acre-feet of diverted water
annually — to the Navajo tribe. In return, the Navajo government gave up 44
percent of its water right claim in the basin.
“Anything over 353,000 diverted acre-feet of water would require a permit
from the state engineer’s office,” Dunlap said during his oral report to the
commission. He added the Echo Ditch Decree — which protects off-reservation
irrigators throughout the San Juan Basin, would not be challenged by the Navajo
government. “The settlement with the Navajos would provide certainty,” he
said. “The state engineer will administer and act as a water master.”
The public will have an opportunity to be heard through motions or lawsuits
during the inter se phase, 11th Judicial District Court Judge pro tempore
Rozier Sanchez said in public hearings held in May and August.
“If it (the settlement) is being exceeded to the point of being
unreasonable, the court can take action,” Sanchez said.
The allottees — because they fall under the jurisdiction of the federal
government — chose the U.S. District Court instead of the state court.
Jim Snyder: jsnyder@daily-times.com
_http://www.daily-times.com/artman/publish/article_16237.shtml_
(http://www.daily-times.com/artman/publish/article_16237.shtml)