President Joe Biden recently signed two new bills into law, allowing significant progress for Native American water rights settlements.
These Indian Water Rights settlements will ensure Tribal nations have "safe, reliable water supplies; improve environmental and health concerns on reservations; and enable economic growth," according to a Jan. 5 news release.
"Water is a sacred resource, and access to water is fundamental to human existence and economic development. Tribal water rights are crucial to ensuring the health, safety and empowerment of communities," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in the release. "The Biden-Harris administration was proud to support these bills, and I am grateful to the bill sponsors and committee leaders for making progress in Congress to ensure that Tribes are finally getting the water resources they have long been promised.”
The Hualapai Tribe Water Rights Settlement Act of 2022 was signed into law Jan. 5, according to a summary of the bill. The bill, sponsored by Sen. Krysten Sinema, outlines the Tribe's water rights, including the right to divert, use and store 4,000 acre-feet of agricultural priority water of the Central Arizona Project previously allocated to nontribal agricultural entities, but retained by the Department of the Interior for reallocation to Tribes in Arizona pursuant to the Central Arizona Project Settlement Act of 2004.
It also authorizes DOI to take specified land into trust for the benefit of the Tribe, according to the summary. In the future, land located outside the reservation may only be taken into trust through an act of Congress.
The bill to amend the White Mountain Apache Tribe Water Rights Qualification Act of 2010 was signed into public law Jan. 9, according to its summary. This bill authorized the design and construction of a rural water system to address the water infrastructure needs on the Tribe's reservation.
It also extends the enforceability deadline to 2027 for the DOI to publish a statement of findings required by the quantification act. According to the summary, the bill repeals the settlement agreement Dec. 31, 2027, if Interior does not publish by that point.
The Department of the Interior announced Tribes would receive $1.7 billion to fulfill Indian water rights settlements, according to a February 2022 news release. According to the Department of the Interior, "the Reclamation Water Settlement Fund was created by Congress in 2009 and receives $120 million in mandatory funding annually from 2020 through 2029."
According to the National Council for History Education, Native American Tribes have not always had the right to use the waters on their Tribal lands. A 1908 Supreme Court decision in Winters v. United States established "Native Americans have the right to draw enough water to enable their own self-sufficiency from the rivers that pass through their reservations," but this didn't mean that they were prioritized for access to that water. The settlements for water rights may be a way for the Department of the Interior to fix that.
