Navajo Nation pipeline a reality

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Burea

WINDOW ROCK — The long-awaited $58 million Navajo Nation Municipal Pipeline is on its way to becoming a reality.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr., joined U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Robert Johnson, Southern Ute Tribal Vice Chairman Gary Hayes and Navajo Nation Council Delegate GloJean Todacheene in a ceremonial groundbreaking last Thursday.

Speaking before officials from the Bureau of Reclamation, the city of Farmington and partners in the Animas-La Plata Project, Shirley said the 28.4-mile-long pipeline will “connect the cities of Shiprock and Farmington together.”

“It’s a long time coming,” he said. “It’s bringing two friends together, bringing families together. That’s just the way it should be.” When completed, the 24-inch pipeline will deliver 4,600 acre-feet of water to Shiprock, Hogback, Nenahnezad, and Upper Fruitland chapters.

“This is a very tangible means of telling the world that we’re working together,” Shirley said. “There are families out there that have been hauling water for decades. Man, I’ll tell you, they’re hurting. Now, finally, they’ll have water in their homes.”

Todacheene, who is also a San Juan County commissioner, said she and her family used to get water from a spring in a wash that her family strained through flour sacks, and that she didn’t take her first real shower until she went to boarding school.

She said what the Navajo people really want is for their young people to return to the Navajo Nation, and that development of the pipeline and the opportunities it will bring will make that possible.

It was through the tenaciousness of Dr. John Leeper, manager of the Navajo Nation Water Management Branch, that the pipeline project was included in the Animas-La Plata and moved forward to development.

Leeper said Monday that the “Farmington to Shiprock pipeline,” as it is known to Navajo, was authorized by the Ute Settlement Act as amended in 2000 and will convey drinking water to the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority system in the Shiprock area.

“The project itself is just the trunk line between Farmington and Shiprock, and then programmatically, the NTUA system is going to be expanded out through IHS and whatever other funds we can get to expand it out,” he said. Though the NTUA system takes in some areas of Cove and Red Valley, there is still no remedy for dealing with that area’s water problems.

The area has radionuclides and arsenic in its water, he said. “They’ve got every problem imaginable. I guess what we’re hoping is the NTUA systems there will be expanded and that potentially the NTUA system could pick up more of those demands because it’s going to have more supply.”

The key to the new pipeline is the $500 million Animas-La Plata Project, which is the fulfillment of the 20-year-old water rights settlement of both the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes. “We can’t deliver water to the Navajo Nation if we don’t have that dam and pumping station upstream,” BOR’s Commission Johnson said.

Johnson was referring to a large pump station under construction at Ridges Basin in Durango, Colo., now known as Ben Nighthorse Campbell Reservoir. “We’re trying to establish an operating entity for the Animas-LaPlata project in Colorado,” Leeper said,

One option is to get BOR to operate it, he said, “But I think all of the project proponents feel that it’s better to have the project proponents operating it. The two Ute tribes are the biggest players — they’ve got 60 percent of the water, and Navajo has got about 5 percent of the water in the project.