dreams vs nightmares

www.hcn.org
Seeking the Water Jackpot
Feature article - March 17, 2008 by Matt Jenkins
For almost a century, the Navajo Tribe has been left out of the Colorado River water game. Now, they're ready to play their hand.

As I read this entire article it was clearly evident why the Director of ADWR pontificated before the US Congress about the Navajo Nation’s allegations they are entitled to more than 800,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water…?

Having been borne and reared in Las Vegas during the hay-day of the alleged mafia control I would not bet against the Navajo Nation being in a position to stick a pin and pop the Arizona water bubble...?

Given Arizona’s JUNIOR rights to Colorado River water, we’re an easy “mark” for some back-room deal between the Navajo Nation and say the state of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico not to mention Nevada and/or California. Arizona is one of the weakest links in the revised Compact of the River which stipulates water use on the Colorado River. Our elected political leaders chose to mortgage our future in a dubious manner permitting Arizona to trade its SENIOR rights for potentially precarious JUNIOR rights, not at all unlike some homeowners caught in today’s “sub-prime-loan” real estate fiasco.
"Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes." With those 20 words, the negotiators punted all their gnarly Indian problems sometime into the future. "The states have basically ignored that there are Native claims to the river." In the intervening years since the 1922 Compact of the River, American perception allowed us with seeming impunity to run rough shod over alleged anemic Native American claims especially to water. That within the Native American community would rise leaders skilled in the “white-man’s” laws thoroughly educated in our water laws, rules, regulations, treaties, bulletins appears to have never crossed our collective minds, or as a result of our collective arrogance, we summarily dismissed any issues or problems which “they” may bring to our table.
In the mind of the Native Americans, especially the Navajos … "Even today, it's like there's a curtain," she said. "(The seven states) are over there, making decisions, knowing full well that we're here. They can see our silhouette." This short Indian clause put off the Indian water rights question for as long as possible. But the costs of that delay, compounded over time, are now coming due. The Navajo Nation is moving to claim its water rights in New Mexico, and may soon do so in Arizona and Utah as well.”
If you throw in the water from tributaries, that would put the total size of the Navajo Colorado River water right at somewhere around 800,000 acre-feet. That is a lot of water - one-and-a-half times more than Las Vegas has rights to. And, because much of the Navajo water would have an 1868 priority date, several big, powerful water users would be booted to the back of the line behind the tribe during a drought. The city of Las Vegas and the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, whose massive canal supplies water to Phoenix and Tucson, already have the worst water-rights priorities on the river. With the Navajo ahead of them in the hierarchy, they'd face an even more serious risk of being cut off.
Arizona’s knee-jerk reaction to this imposing potential Navajo water challenge is understandable when decisions our elected leaders made for the future well-being of our State are based on a woefully unsustainable foundation.
It may be well for us to reflect that:

What are welcome and pleasant dreams
for some can become indelible nightmares
for others


Might there be grains of truth in … whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.