NAPI gets $300,000 to improve irrigation

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — The U.S. Department of the Interior has awarded $300,000 in Water 2025 grant funding to Navajo Agricultural Products Industry, a Navajo Nation high-tech farming enterprise, to use toward an irrigation efficiency plan.

U.S. Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said NAPI will receive the funding to put toward a $1 million project to create a canal gate opening system and scheduling program to increase water use efficiency. The project is estimated to save 26,000 acre-feet of water annually. An acre-foot of water is enough for a family of four for a year.

“NAPI is a huge project that is important to the Navajo Nation and San Juan County,” Domenici said. “I hope the program is successful and serves an example of how other irrigation systems in New Mexico can be enhanced to conserve our valuable water resources.”

The proposed NAPI canal gate operating system and an irrigation scheduling program is designed to reduce canal spills and incidents of over-applications of water to the irrigated fields. It will involve monitoring upstream and downstream water levels, as well as implementing a control system to establish improved gate settings and operations.

Navajo Nation Resources Committee Chairman George Arthur, while appreciative of the news, said Friday that $300,000 “is just a drop in the bucket.”

During a July 28 special session of Council, members of the NAPI board reported that only 75,000 acres of the farm project have been completed to date and the once model project is now aging and needs up to $40 million just to replace aging center pivots that are collapsing.

The Navajo Nation Council has been asked to consider taking legal action against the federal government to get it to follow through on completion of the Navajo Indian Irrigation Project, which provides water to NAPI.

NIIP was enacted in 1962 by Congress under former President John F. Kennedy’s administration and was designed to provide a water delivery system from Navajo Dam reservoir to irrigate 110,630 acres of Navajo land. The statute includes an annual diversion right of 508,000 acre feet of water for irrigation.

NAPI was created by Council in 1970 to provide employment opportunities for the Navajo people. Only 75,000 acres of the farm project have been completed to date. NIIP, now 46 years old, still has not been completed.

The Intergovernmental Relations Subcommittee on NIIP met Friday in Window Rock to review a position statement for NIIP and to discuss the pros and cons of litigation, as recommended by the NAPI board.

Also on the agenda was a review of the San Juan River Water Rights Settlement. In approving the water rights settlement with New Mexico in 2005, Council took out the water portion of NIIP development.

The majority of Friday’s session was held in executive session. Navajo Nation Attorney General Louis Denetsosie and NAPI Attorney Paul Frye were present for the meeting.

“I think for us to really put together a position, we really need to know where we want to go,” Denetsosie said just before the committee went into closed session.

In the July 28 discussion, Arthur reminded Council of the water rights settlement legislation pending before Congress, saying that litigation could have some undesirable consequences.