Click the link to read the article on the KJZZ website (Gabriel Pietrorazio). Here’s an excerpt:
December 5, 2024
The future of managing water in the West remains uncertain following the presidential election. But a handful of Colorado River Basin tribes are celebrating a series of new water infrastructure investments from the outgoing Biden administration. Inside a cramped room at a Las Vegas resort, leaders from five federally recognized Southwestern tribes came together during the annual Colorado River Water Users Association conference…
The San Carlos Apache Tribe and Fort Yuma Quechan Indian Tribe, which straddles the Arizona-California border, met with the Bureau of Reclamation to extend water-saving agreements during a signing ceremony on Wednesday. San Carlos has agreed to not withdraw 30,000 acre feet from Lake Mead in exchange for $12 million from the federal government, while Fort Yuma Quechan will collect $5.2 million to leave 13,000 acre feet alone. Colorado River Indian Tribes Chairwoman Amelia Flores signed a letter of intent to fund a $5 million planning study to construct a new reservoir for its main canal through Reclamation’s Native American Affairs Technical Assistance Program, which provides support to develop, manage and protect their water resources…Additionally, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, which spans the Four Corners states of Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, signed a repayment contract for the Animas-La Plata Project that has been ongoing for 14 years. It’ll also allocate the tribe 38,000 acre feet of storage in Lake Nighthorse, a reservoir near Durango, Colorado…Lastly, the White Mountain Apache Tribe has been awarded $21.5 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to help plan and design a rural water system to divert, store and distribute water from the White River for some 15,000 residents across the Fort Apache Reservation in eastern Arizona.