How Arizona Stands Between Tribes and Their Water

This articles first appeared at ProPublica and High Country News. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1460652
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Wonderful people in Arizona State government. :face_with_symbols_over_mouth:

Not my dog but I approve his move…

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I understand the Saudi tribe has plenty of water, in fact enough they’re growing alfalfa with it.

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I don’t think that’s on Navajo land More like Between Phoenix and Tucson or over by Yuma
La Paz county is the Saudi alfalfa operation. And we are still in a mega drought of over 20 years. It’s bad water wise around here.

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I think the point was that AZ is fucking over its own citizens (regardless of where the water is) and giving favorable treatment to the country of 9-11 terrorists.

And trying to extract concessions not related to the water issue (see casino licenses) is just another fuck you to the tribes.

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Over on the NM side of the Navajo Reservation, a lot of water is allocated to Navajo Agricultural Products Industries, NAPI.

There is good runoff this year. The reservoirs are still down.

Happy Fathers’ Day. You can count your beer intake in dog beers today. :wink:

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As I indicated with the emogi… I am not at all fond of my state’s government… well the GOP part anyway and they’re the majority and have been since 1969.

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As you indicated run off is ok this year so far but we need a wet monsoon (traditionally July 4th thu all of August) for a decade to refill it all. The last 20 years have not produced and the population in AZ continues to grow.

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Except they can’t get any of it because the haven’t “settled” with Arizona.

As for the Saudis, in 2016, they were buying up the land for alfalfa
https://www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2016/01/15/saudi-arabia-buying-up-farmland-in-us-southwest.html?amp_gsa=1&amp_js_v=a9&usqp=mq331AQIUAKwASCAAgM%3D#amp_tf=From%20%251%24s&aoh=16870975447800&csi=1&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnbc.com%2F2016%2F01%2F15%2Fsaudi-arabia-buying-up-farmland-in-us-southwest.html

Seven years later, years into the drought, locals and the Dems are trying to stop their use of unlimited water.

Water that would be available for Arizona residents and the Sovereign Nations.

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Each reservation comes with Federal Reserve Water Rights. So this ruling could also affect National Park Units. (also Federal Reserves).

Eventually, the case reached the Supreme Court, which heard it this March. Tribes and legal experts are concerned the court could use the case to target its 1908 precedent that guaranteed tribes’ right to water, a ruling that would risk the future of any tribes with unsettled water claims.

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Eighty percent and then some of Arizona’s water withdrawals goes to support agriculture. It’s not really golf course and lawns. Although goodness knows we don’t need these in a desert.

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Money is not speech.

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Lauren Boebert hasn’t been elected to Congress in Arizona yet. Although I think she’d be a good contender for Gosar’s seat if she were to move her residence (the imagination runs wild) to Bullhead City. The primary would be outrageous. How can we make this happen?

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Both U.S. and State governments have deliberately kept their feet on the necks of indigenous people since European colonizers showed up on this continent. Additionally, the West was an economic colony of the railroad and mining interests in the 19th century, and remains an economic colony of outside interests currently. That indigenous folk refuse to give up and become " the dying Indian" is to their credit; a blanket, a bag of beans, and a reservation were never just. Our politicians, Gosar, Biggs, Kelli Ward, etc., are testimony to the power of money to pervert both justice and mercy. Water is precious, and will be increasingly expensive. The powers that be will be looking to their own interests, as always. Our indigenous folk are showing all of us that it is possible to push back. Never, never ever give up.

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Good dog!


A lil artistic edit

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Some of the Native American folks had a hard time with the concept that they had to give up rights in order to get rights,” Kyl said

I, um, have a different understanding of the word “rights” than former senator Kyl. This article was so angrifying. It’s obvious that Arizona isn’t working in good faith because they know they’re wrong and are using every method they can to avoid doing the right thing.

Side note: none of this was mentioned in the reporting on the interstate negotiations for Colorado river water allocation deductions, which points to a cultural blind spot much larger than Arizona

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He’s taking about western water rights as adjudicated by water rights law. The southwest doesn’t have “riparian rights”. It’s “first in time, first in right.” And no, it doesn’t take into account that Native Americans were here first.

In the American legal system, prior appropriation water rights is the doctrine that the first person to take a quantity of water from a water source for “beneficial use” (agricultural, industrial or household) has the right to continue to use that quantity of water for that purpose.[1][2] Subsequent users can take the remaining water for their own use if they do not impinge on the rights of previous users.

Prior appropriation rights do not constitute a full ownership rightin the water, merely the right to withdraw it, and can be abrogated if not used for an extended period of time. Wikipedia.

The 1908 law establishes Federal Reserve Water rights.

A water right can be sold, traded, negotiated, etc. as long as it is in accordance with western water rights law.

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The cultural blind spot is deep and wide in Arizona. I would bet good money the residents here in Tucson have no idea there is a Yaqui barrio in the middle of town. And reservations account for around a quarter of Arizona’s lands

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Let me add something regarding Federal Reserve Water rights as it applies to the NPS. The most noteworthy case is Cappaert vs US.

Since the subject is Reserved Rights, it would be well to define
what Reserved Rights are. The best and most recent statement of this
doctrine by the Supreme Court is found in Cappaert v. United States:
This Court has long held that when the Federal Government withdraws its land from the public domain and reserves it for a federal purpose, the Government, by implication, reserves appurtenant water then unappropriated to the extent needed to accomplish the purpose of the reservation. In so doing the United States acquires a reserved right in unappropriated water which vests on the date of the reservation and is superior to the rights of future appropriators.


In determining whether there is a federally reserved water right implicit in a federal reservation of public land, the issue is whether the Government intended to reserve unappropriated and thus available water. Intent is inferred if the previously unappropriated waters are necessary to accomplish the purposes for which the reservation was created.


The implied-reservation-of-water doctrine, however, reserves
only that amount of water necessary to fulfill the purpose of the reservation, no more.

This is an older document, so it may be superannuated in terms of NPS policy, but the background is still valuable.

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image
This is your country on Republicans. :poop:

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