Water is the lifeblood of Phoenix in the Sonoran Desert
Stevan Augustin
Native Americans have contributed significant amounts of water to the recently signed drought contingency plan of 2019 (DCP).
I worked for the United States Bureau of Reclamation from 1983 to 2007 in the Phoenix Office helping to construct the Central Arizona Project. I worked in the areas of economics, finance, GIS and water service contracts.
Recently, the seven Colorado River states (including Arizona), the Federal government and Mexico approved the DCP in 2018-2019. Two Native American Communities contributed significant amounts of water – hundreds of thousands of acre-feet – to the DCP: the Gila River (GRIC) and Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT). Other Native American Communities contributed water also. Arizona has junior water rights on the Colorado River which could impact CAP water deliveries to central Arizona, including Goodyear. GRIC and CRIT are cutting back on water from the Colorado River to keep more water in Lake Mead and conserving water use to help prevent serious cut backs in CAP water deliveries to Central Arizona cities like Goodyear.
The first recorded people to live and farm in Phoenix were the Hohokam Indians. They left a canal system which took water from the Salt River. The Salt River Project (SRP) User’s Association was one of the first non-Indian irrigation districts formed by Federal Reclamation law in 1904 and Roosevelt Dam was authorized and completed in 1913. SRP afterwards greatly expanded irrigated agriculture. SRP provided the first increment of water to grow the population of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
The state of Arizona also had water allocated to it through a series of federal laws and agreements but had no way to use most of that water, except for entities located directly on the Colorado River (including non-Indian and Indian Agriculture and CRIT cities and towns, such as Yuma). That all changed when the CAP was authorized on September 30, 1968 in the Lower Colorado River Basin Project Act. Construction began on the CAP in 1970. CAP pumps water out of Lake Havasu on the Colorado River. The canal system stretches 336 miles. CAP water is delivered to cities in Phoenix, Casa Grande and Tucson metropolitan areas and towns; Arizona Native American Indian Communities including Salt-River, Pima-Maricopa, Fort McDowell, GRIC, Ak-Chin, ToHono o’Odham and White Mountain Apache, among others; and non-Indian agricultural districts in south Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties. CAP is approximately a $4 billion project operated by the CAP. CAP has delivered in some years two million acre-feet of water (an acre-foot of water could support three Arizona families a year). Many Indian Communities entered into long term leases with cities in Arizona providing funds to the Native American Communities and water to the cities.
Arizona has more Indian Water Rights’ Settlement Acts than any other state in the United States. These settlement acts have provided funds and water to the Native American Communities and enabled them to expand agriculture and thus employment on Indian Reservations. Native Americans were the first people to live and farm the lands that form Arizona. Their water has been used to the benefit of all people living in Arizona at present.
In total, approximately 46% of the CAP water supply is or will be permanently allocated to Arizona Indian Tribes. This makes CAP the largest single provider of Colorado River water to tribal water users in the Colorado River system.