UPDATE: Tribal Water Rights Agreement Goes to Congress

For the last couple months, we’ve been brining you updates about the water rights settlement between the Navajo Nation, the Hopi Tribe, the San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe and the state of Arizona. At the end of May, all three tribal councils approved the settlement! This is a huge step towards ensuring safe water access for everyone living on these reservations.

Water on Tribal Land

Each sovereign tribe in Arizona has to meet their own water rights agreement with the state in order to claim and use water. For the tribes living in the northeast, it has been a decades-long struggle to secure an equitable agreement; these tribes live along the Colorado River but were excluded from the original treaties and agreements dividing the river’s water among the southwestern states and Mexico.

Consequently, the people living on these reservations have a hard time accessing clean water. 30% of households on the Navajo Nation do not have running water, and even more do not have clean water. Many families have to haul their own water because it is difficult to ensure that small wells aren’t contaminiated by natural arsenic deposists.

The state and the tribes have been negotiating for decades, but there has not been a deal put forward for over a decade. After last summer’s supreme court ruling that the state of Arizona did not have an obligation to provide water to the Navajo Nation, the state and tribal representatives returned to negotiations.

New Settlement Agreement

This year, it was announced that the Navajo Nation, along with the Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute Tribes, and the state of Arizona had been able to draft an agreement. The agreement sees to claims made on both the upper and lower basin of the Colorado River, as well as the Little Colorado River, the Gila River Basin, and several important groundwater aquifers. You can read a full breakdown of the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Agreement here.

You can read the full agreement here.

In addition to settling water rights claims, the agreement also seeks $5 billion in federal aid for various infrastructure projects. This would allow the tribe to build water pipelines and wells to bring water into people’s homes. Congress must agree to the agreement in order for the settlement, and all of its claims, to be finalized.

Now that the Tribal Councils have agreed to the settlement, we must wait on congress to act.

Take Action!

Today we encourage you to join us in advocating for our Indigenous neighbors and community members by writing to your congress members and urging them to support the passage of this settlement. Our Arizona lawmakers will be influential in this process since the agreement is coming straight from our state!

You can email Senator Mark Kelly here, and Senator Kyrsten Sinema here.

Click here to find the contact information for your representative!

Thank you for your advocacy!