WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court says it will hear a water dispute involving the U.S. government and the Navajo Nation.
The high court said Friday it would review a lower court ruling in favor of the Navajo Nation, which spans parts of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico. The government signed treaties with the Navajo Nation in 1849 and 1868 that established the reservation.
It was later expanded westward to the Colorado River, which forms the reservation’s western boundary. At issue in the case is water from the Colorado River, which itself is shrinking in part because of overuse and drought.
The case dates back to 2003, when the tribe sued, alleging that the federal government in its Colorado River projects had failed to consider or protect water rights of the tribe. Most recently, a trial court dismissed the case but a federal appeals court allowed it to proceed. The federal government is challenging that result.
“As Westerners, we were all too familiar with the negative consequences of lawsuits challenging water operations in basins across the West,” Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman wrote in the report’s foreword, as reported previously by The Associated Press. “Once litigation starts, flexibility, innovation and problem-solving often give way to rigid positioning and protection of positions.”
In comments before the report was finalized, Native American tribes said in December 2020 they largely were left out of the discussions that led to the guidelines and want a bigger role in the next round of talks, with recognition of their sovereign status. They hold the rights to 3.4 million acre-feet of water annually in the Colorado River basin.
Not all tribes, including the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe in northwestern Arizona, have secured the legal right to the water they claim in the basin.
Burman said the Bureau of Reclamation, states, tribes and others will focus in the weeks ahead on creating timelines for the negotiations.
“We all will need to work more efficiently and faster than we typically have in the past,” she said in a virtual meeting of Colorado River water users. This year (2020) “has taught us, if we know anything, that we cannot take time for granted.”
When the 2007 guidelines took effect, Lake Powell and Lake Mead together were about half full. Conservation, delayed water deliveries, a balancing act and other measures have kept them hovering at that level.
States, tribes, cities and other water users are expected to use the Bureau of Reclamation report as a resource for deciding what will replace the guidelines.
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