Navajo-Gallup project
seeks Congress’ OK

By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — Legislation to settle the Navajo Nation’s water rights claims to the San Juan River in New Mexico has been rolled into an omnibus package introduced by U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, in hopes of getting congressional approval.

In addition, U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici announced July 8 that he had succeeded in restoring funding to a wide variety of federal water projects in New Mexico when the Senate Energy and Water Development Appropriations Subcommittee approved its FY2009 appropriations bill.

Funding under the Bureau of Reclamation includes $77,000 for the Navajo Nation water investigations program and $1 million for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply project, which reportedly will be used to complete the Environmental Impact Statement.

Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, introduced the bipartisan omnibus bill June 29 which includes more than 90 individual bills reported by the committee.

Navajo Nation Water Rights Attorney Stanley Pollack reported Thursday to the Navajo Nation Resources Committee that Title X of Bingaman’s Omnibus Public Land Management Act, S.B. 3213, includes the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement, which California wants very much, and the Northwestern New Mexico Rural Water Projects, S.B. 1171.

“What this means is that the Navajo legislation has been attached to a very, very, very large omnibus piece of legislation. This sort of thing is not uncommon, especially in an election year where there’s limited floor time available in the Senate and the Senate is trying to take care of a lot of business at once,” Pollack said.

“If it moves, it will move in one of three times: either later on this month before the August recess, or it will move in September immediately after the August recess, or if there’s a lame duck session after the election in November, perhaps at that time.

“Virtually all 50 states have some interest in seeing the passage of this bill, so, from a political standpoint, when you package a bill like this, and you include things that everybody wants ... basically you have a bill that has broad-based support,” he said.

Prior to markup of the Navajo settlement, Pollack said Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl wrote Bingaman and said he could not support the bill in its present form because the Navajo settlement did not resolve the issue of how Window Rock would get its water supply.

“What the bill said was we will authorize the project to be built to Window Rock, but before we authorize the water to be delivered to Window Rock, there needs to be an agreement between the Navajo Nation and the state of Arizona as to how that will happen.

“Sen. Kyl thought that was not sufficient. He wanted to specify that the water for use in Window Rock would actually be water that was set aside in the Arizona Water Settlement Act of 2004,” Pollack said.

In that act, Congress specifically reserved 6,411 acre feet of Central Arizona Project water for use in the Arizona settlement. Kyl wants the water to come out of that pool.
“Sen. Kyl proposed certain amendments with respect to amending 1171, and now that Arizona has questions about 1171, Colorado — which had supported 1171 — now does not support Sen. Kyl’s amendments,” Pollack said.

“Right now, Arizona is threatening to block the bill if it doesn’t include their amendments. Colorado is threatening to block the bill if it does include the Arizona amendments, so we have to see where this all leads.

“We’re trying to come up with a water solution for Window Rock that is acceptable to both states and the state of New Mexico.” The Nation is continuing to have dialog with the states, he said.