Guest Comment: Minority of a minority controls Colorado water

The mayors of Prescott and Prescott Valley have stated that the Salt River Project “has suggested that a solution to the Prescott area’s water needs is to pipe water from the Colorado River.”

That the SRP would suggest such a thing seemed surprising. Because, to start with, the SRP knows there is no uncommitted water available from the Colorado River for use by Prescott or other rural areas.

Further, if the City of Prescott and the towns of Prescott Valley and Chino Valley could purchase or lease the right to use Colorado River water, the cost of piping it in likely will be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. This, however, should not be regarded as an insurmountable impediment (because an assured water supply is needed, the communities can be perceived as doing what they have to do to get it, including seeking state and federal help)

Presently, there are two possible ways for Prescott, to follow up on the SRP proposal to acquire the right to use Colorado River Water.

First, purchase privately owned land which has the right to Colorado River water and transfer the water to the communities

Second, lease Colorado River water from one of the State’s Indian Tribes.

Of the options, leasing from and Indian tribe is the worst, because it cannot be viewed as permanent tribes are under no obligation to rent or sell their water and, in the future, could refuse to renew a lease

The unfortunate part of the situation for Prescott and other rural area is that Colorado River water should be available to them without having to either purchase or lease it. The water, after all, belongs to Arizona, and as long as there are unused quantities (all water that Indian tribes have leased and will lease fits this category), the people first in line for ti should be able to get it without enriching Indian tribes or private land owners.

Because the Colorado River water belongs to the people, but is administered under state law and government, it should be of interest how some Indian tribes got excess amounts of water so they could receive unearned and undeserved money through leasing

Arizona received its yearly entitlement of 2.8 million acre-feet of mainstream Colorado River in the federal Boulder Canyon Project Act of Dec. 21, 1928. The U.S. Congress also gave California 4.4 million acre-feet and Nevada 300,000 acre-feet

Congress gave no water to the U.S. Supreme Court but in 1963, in Arizona vs. Californa to prove Arizona’s right to its water, the court stole 25 percent of this state’s water for three Indian tribes either along, or near the Colorado River. The court later increased the tribes’ water to 27.8 percent (778,784 acre-feet. one acre-foot is 325,851 gallons. )

Few Arizonans objected to the court’s theft , because, in affirming the state’s water entitlement, the state was cleared to ask congress to approve construction of the Central Arizona Project (CAP). The expectation for the CAP was that the Colorado River water was not previously appropriated for use along the river or usurped for the three tribes would be available for CAP delivery.

Initially, CAP expected about 1.2 million acre-feet of deleverable water per year. Today, the total is 1,415,000 acre- feet.

In 1976, five Indian communities in central Arizona ( Salt River, Gila River, Fort McDowell , Ak-Chin and Papago [now Tohono O’odham]) were awareded 257,000 acre-feet of the CAP’s water by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Two years later, the Interior Department, Without permission from Congress, decided to use the CAP’s Colorado River water to satisfy Indian water rights claims. For its authority, the department relied on the Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling, which was interpreted as giving the Interior secreetary water master power over Arizona, California and Nevada.

Initially, Arizona fought the Interior Department, but the department brought various pressures against water users, including SRP, and threatened litigation. Sometime in the 1980’s, the SRP, the sate bowed to the Interior Department’s insistence.

In 1980, the Interior Department gave CAP water to five additional tribes ( San Carlos Apache, Pascua Yaqui, Tonto Apache, Camp Verde- Yavapai and Yavapai- Prescott), increasing the total from CAP to 309,828 acre-feet.

Three years later, using recommendations from the Arizona Department of Water Resources, the Interior Department allocated CAP water to cities. Prescott got 7,127 got acre- feet per year , Cottonwood 1,789 acre-feet, Camp Verde 1,443 acre-feet and Mayer 332 acre-feet (The Yavapai-Prescott Indian Tribe was allocated 500 acre-feet in 1980)

It was expected that the communities, or water compaines serving them, and the Yavapi-Prescott would give the CAP water to the SRP in exchange for Verde River water. The SRP claims most of the Verde River for use by its shareholders in the Salt River Valley ( the Phoenix area).

However, because of threats to fish and wildlife dependent upon the Verde River, the exchange did not happen. Instead, all the water was sold to the City of Scottsdale and the money recieved put in trust for future water development.

Future developement mostly meant buing irrigated to Prescott, Wildlife concerns and SRP’s prior claims to Verde River water appear to limit the amount off groundwater that can be pumped.

Meantime, by 1996, water settlement agreements were reached with five tribes that gave them an additional 137,268 acre-feet of CAP water each year, or a total of 447, 096 acre-feet.

The latest congressionally approved settlement, with the Gila River Indian Community and the Tohono O’odham Nation in 2004, gives tribes 650,724 acre-feet of CAP’s deliverable water, including 67,300 acre-feet the Interior Department reserved for future settlements.

Without the 357, 896 acre-feet of tribal settlements, the water presumably would be available for Arizona’s growing population, including in Prescott, other rural areas and on reservations.

While this water s assigned for use by CAP, which currently delivers water in Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties, other Arizona counties can join the CAP. CAP deliveries could be extended for example, into Santa Cruz and Cochise counties.

Colorado River water delivers into Yavapai County, where Prescott is located, are more likely to come via a proposed pipeline from Lake Powell that also would deliver water to the Hopi and Navajo tribes, Flagstaff, Williams and the Grand Canyon. The cost likely would exceed $1 billion.

Tribes today are entitled to almost 46 percent of CAP’s water. That 650,724 acre-feet, combined with the 778,784 acre-feet pilfered for tribes by the Supreme Court, gives reservations 1,429,508 acre-feet, or 51 percent, of the state’s mainstream water.

The combined population of these tribes is little more than 1 percent of the state’s 5,120,632 people (2000 census) which means that a minority of a minority controls more than half of Arizona’s Colorado River water. It suggests, too, that Arizona’s Colorado River water has been worse than mismanaged.

Earl Zarbin of Phoenix is a retired reporter and editior for The Arizona Republic. He is the author of six books, four of them dealing with centeral Arizona water. The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily this newspaper’s;