Click the link to read the article on the Bloomberg Law website (Bobby Magill). Here’s an excerpt:
“We are trying to be part of the decision-makers and what’s happening,” said Manuel Heart, chairman of Colorado’s Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, speaking Thursday at the conference. “We, too, have needs.” […]
But as water in the Colorado River diminishes, nobody knows yet how much of it belongs to the the Navajo Nation and other regional tribes, since their water rights have never been quantified. There already isn’t enough water for all the Colorado River Basin’s 40 million people, and tribes could be entitled to as much as 25% of it, according to the multistate, multitribe Water & Tribes Initiative.
“It would be difficult to overstate the importance of tribal water rights as a wild card. They’re very significant,” Jason Robison, a law professor at the University of Wyoming who is affiliated with the Water and Tribes Initiative, said before the conference…
Heather Tanana, a law professor at the University of Utah who is Navajo, said tribes’ lack of resources to tap Colorado River water for their residents has had devastating public health consequences.
As many as 40% of Navajo residents don’t have access to running water and have to haul it to their homes, which created a public health crisis on the Navajo Reservation during the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.
“If their water rights had been settled and quantified, and actually delivered, then hundreds—thousands—of lives would be saved during the pandemic,” Tanana said. “It’s a life or death matter connected to public health.”
The need for tribal water rights agreements is urgent because tribes need to be able to use the water they’re entitled to and the states need to know how much water they can use as the West dries up, Weiner said.