The Department of the Interior announced on Tuesday that it would be using $1.7 billion from the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act to fulfill Indian Water Rights settlements, of which there are nearly three dozen as of the law’s signing on Nov. 15 of last year. “Water is a sacred resource, and water rights are crucial to ensuring the health, safety and empowerment of Tribal communities,” Haaland said in a press release. “With this crucial funding from President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Interior Department will be able to uphold our trust responsibilities and ensure that Tribal communities receive the water resources they have long been promised. I am grateful that Tribes, some of whom have been waiting for this funding for decades, are finally getting the resources they are owed.”
The Tribes who will be receiving funds this year include the Aamodt Litigation Settlement (Pueblos of San Ildefonso, Nambe, Pojoaque, and Tesuque), Blackfeet Nation, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Crow Nation, Gila River Indian Community, Navajo-Utah Water Rights Settlement and Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, San Carlos Apache Nation, Tohono O’odham Nation, and White Mountain Apache Tribe. Haaland’s announcement came on the heels of a trip to the Gila River Indian Community, where she met with the community and visited water conservation sites like the Managed Aquifer Recharge Site 5 known as MAR-5. The Tribe will receive $92 million for water projects. The funds were a long time coming given the fact that the Arizona Water Settlements Act was signed into law nearly two decades ago. The Act allows both the Gila River Indian Community and Tohono O'odham Nation to continue water conservation efforts and management.
It may seem like quite some time since the Arizona Water Settlements Act, but the 2004 law is certainly not the first such Water Rights settlement to be enacted. That honor would go to the Ak-Chin Indian Community Act of 1978, which guaranteed 85,000 acre feet annually of groundwater, though an addition made in 1984 would only free up 10,000 acre feet of that water “in any year in which sufficient surface water is available,” putting around 15% of the water the community relies on in limbo. The Ak-Chin community, whose name references its agricultural practices, relies heavily on water to sustain numerous crops that include cotton, corn, wheat, and potatoes. They are considered one of the largest farming communities in the country and have been growing crops long before Arizona became recognized as a state in 1912.
Yet in 2017 the community was forced to sue the Central Arizona Water Conservation District (CAWCD), which said it would no longer provide the 10,000 acre feet to the Tribe. It took until 2019 for a judge to do the right thing and force the CAWCD to distribute the 10,000 acre feet of water per the 1984 agreement. There are unfortunately numerous instances of Indigenous communities facing water crises and having to fight for their rights, so Tuesday’s announcement is a major step in the right direction as the Biden administration looks to right major wrongs as it relates to Indigenous rights. Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said in a press release that the funds the Tribe will be receiving will create 200 jobs and lauded the investment to the likes of MAR-5, as it is considered “a place that honors our past, sustains us in the present, and will leave a better future for generations to come.”
Among those who accompanied Haaland and Lewis to the Gila River Indian Community and MAR-5 was Natural Resources Chair Raúl Grijalva, who represents southern Arizona in the U.S. Senate and has received support from the Gila River Indian Community in the past. Grijalva praised the investments but said much more must be done. “Congress must get back to work to pass permanent annual funding for the many tribal water rights settlements that still have yet to be paid,” Grijalva said. According to a report from last year on the “Status of Tribal Water Rights in the Colorado River Basin”—where the Gila River Indian Community and 29 other tribes get their water—a dozen tribes have unresolved water rights claims.