Front Page  water

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Navajo-Gallup Line Needs Federal Funds

By John Fleck
Copyright © 2007 Albuquerque Journal; Journal Staff Writer
    GALLUP— Gallup is running out of water.
    Nearby parts of the eastern Navajo Nation never had much water to begin with.
    Together, the communities are eyeing the San Juan River 90 miles to the north, where a billion-dollar federal project offers what looks like water salvation.
    But is the water— or, more precisely, the federal money needed to pay for it— a mirage?
    "The question is," Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., said in a recent interview, "will we get it?"
    The answer lies in a tangle of politics involving age-old questions of Indian water rights and uncertainties over the Bush administration's willingness to support the project because of its cost.
    The pipeline would provide drinking water across a vast area of western New Mexico that is home to 100,000 people, a population estimated to reach 250,000 by 2040. The project is the expensive centerpiece of a complex water deal between the Navajo Nation and the state of New Mexico.
    The project has bipartisan support from New Mexico's congressional leadership. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., and Domenici jointly introduced a Senate bill in April to make the project happen. Rep. Tom Udall, D-N.M., introduced a companion bill in the House.
    The legislation lays the project's foundation. But without Bush administration support, finding the money to pay for it could be a problem.
    "I assume the administration will not support the legislation because of the cost," Bingaman said by phone in a recent interview.
    The administration is holding its cards close. In a series of hearings this spring, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne declined to take a stand on the project.
    A federal report issued in March said more detailed cost studies are needed before the Interior Department can decide whether it supports construction of the pipeline.
    Those studies are under way.
    The pipeline would traverse the eastern Navajo Nation, bringing drinking water to isolated communities that have never had any. Three-quarters of the project's water would go to the Navajos.
    That is why the question of federal funding for the project was very much on the mind of Raymond Chee one recent afternoon as he pulled his pickup truck up to a water-loading station in Gallup.
    Like many who live outside Gallup in the Indian country of western New Mexico, Chee's only water supply comes from loading stations like this, hauled home in barrels in the back of a pickup truck.
    A small fraction of the pipeline's water would go to the Jicarilla Apache reservation, with the rest going to Gallup, at the end of the pipeline.
    The city of 20,000, on the edge of the Navajo Nation, gets all its water from wells drilled into sandstone that underlies the community. Current supplies are dwindling. The water table in its well fields is dropping 20 feet per year.
    Within 10 years, the combined effect of a slowly growing population and a rapidly declining aquifer will mean Gallup won't have enough water to meet peak summer demand, according to Lance Allgood, executive director of the city's water department.
    Gallup is already doing everything it can to stretch its existing supply, according to Allgood.
    Grass on athletic fields at the city's big Ford Canyon Park was torn out last year and replaced with artificial turf. Lawns have never been a big part of Gallup's landscape aesthetic, but, in many neighborhoods, you can now see bare dirt where people have torn out what grass they had.
    The city's golf course has long been irrigated with water from the city's sewage treatment plant. Barrels are sprouting on rain spouts to catch water running off roofs.
    The city is looking seriously at cleaning its sewage effluent sufficiently to put it back into the drinking water system.
    And the city has applied for a permit to drill yet more wells east of town. But that aquifer has the same problem as the one now in use north of town— a finite supply that would soon be exhausted.
    For Gallup city officials, the only long-term sustainable supply is the San Juan River, via the federal Navajo-Gallup Pipeline.
    Gallup residents understand the pipeline, even under a best-case scenario, is not a panacea. Allgood figures it will be at least 20 years before the first drops of the pipeline's water arrives.
    But like his colleagues at the nearby Navajo Nation, he believes it is the only way to provide for the region's future, over the 40-year planning horizon contemplated by the latest federal studies but also far beyond.
    "The tribe and Gallup believe we'll be here longer than 40 years," he said.