Zuni River Basin water draws dozens to meeting

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GRANTS — An issue that has roots stretching back decades was revisited at the Cibola County Complex Thursday morning where dozens of residents of the Zuni River Basin south of Gallup, packed into the civic building's convention, trying to figure out exactly why they were there.

It's the water.

They knew they all were or soon would be defendants in a federal lawsuit proposing to offer them the right to draw up to 0.7 acre feet of water a year from their domestic wells instead of the 3 acre feet they have a right to now. They also knew that Thursday's status conference was a chance for them to ask questions of the federal and state attorneys prosecuting the case.

What they couldn't figure out, however, was why they were being sued in the first place. All their suspicions pointed toward the Navajo and especially Zuni tribes that had jointed the suit as plaintiffs.

"Why is this being done? Who started it, and why? I still don't understand," said an exasperated Cynthia Aragon. "I want to know why, that's all."

She conveyed a rumor she'd heard that the Zunis were dreaming of building a power plant, which they all knew would need plenty of water.

"If that's true," she demanded, "just tell us."

Whatever the details of the rumors they'd heard, they shared a seemingly unshakable conviction that the government was robbing them of their water to give to the tribes. At worst, they suspected the tribe was already drawing down their water supplies.

It didn't help that no one, not even the half-dozen attorneys in the room, could explain exactly who's idea it was to sue them, let alone why. What they knew was that the federal government filed the suit on the very last day the very last hour, reportedly of the Clinton administration in 2001. All Bradley Bridgewater, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, could tell them was that someone in his department had approved the decision.

What basin resident Ed Wagner said he'd heard was that the federal government actually encouraged the tribes to sue.

"Why do they need (the water)?" asked Sammy Briggs. "Why are they in the suit against us?"

The answer, said another, "has been circumvented and skirted too much."

Bridgewater decided he'd heard enough of the conspiracy theories.

"I have a very concise answer," he said. "I don't know, and I don't care."

He'd been given the task of prosecuting the case, he said, and he was simply doing his job.

That didn't do much to pacify the crowd.

"We could have a bunch of people killed over this," said a "pissed" Wagner, not specifying who those people might be. "You're dealing with old time people over here."

Whoever they thought was taking it and why, they could not shake the feeling they were losing something, something very valuable. As they was it, the water was theirs, not something the government had the power to give them.

"I feel like someone's trying to make me an offer of something that's already mine," said Aragon.

Edward Bagley, a lawyer for the Office of the State Engineer, said the government wasn't giving or taking anything.

"We're not giving you anything," he said. "We're identifying what you already have."

Bagley said he did not know how the state ever came up with the three-acre-feet figure New Mexicans are currently allowed to draw out of their domestic wells each year. But studies across the state, he said, indicate that most households with domestic wells use no more than 0.5 acre feet a year. By offering Zuni Basin residents 0.7 acre feet, the government was actually throwing in "a little extra."

The state engineers laboriously measuring each defendant's water use property by property said they had yet to come across a single basin resident who was drawing more than 0.7 acre feet.

Some residents said it wasn't fair for the government to measure their use during drought conditions. Bagley said the state was taking that into consideration.

Even so, the government is giving each defendant the chance to prove they're using more water than they're being offered, and the right to keep using it if they can. Bagley didn't deny that their measurements were estimates at best, and that they weren't always accurate.

As for why they were all being sued, Bagley could only point to state law.

Although the law gives New Mexicans the right to a certain amount of water, no one knows for sure how much most of them use. Whether they stick to the limit pretty much depends on the honor system.

To find out how much they're using, Bagley said, state law insists "that all the waters of New Mexico be adjudicated."

"This is a lawsuit that ultimately was going to come to the Zuni area," he said. "Ultimately, the entire state will be done."

Still, the crowd never got its answer about the Zuni and Navajo tribes.

Throughout the meeting, amid the sporadic abuse, Zuni Tribal Councilman Edward Wenytewa sat quietly. Afterward, he was eager to dispel the rumors.

The tribe will have to make its own water claims on the basin by the end of 2006. Some private basin residents accused the tribe of pumping its wells at full tilt in order to prove an artificial level of "need."

"We're not wasting water," Wenytewa insisted.

According to Jane March, an attorney for the tribe, Zuni's involvement in this suit stems from another dispute dating back to the early 1980s. The City of Gallup attempted to develop a well near Zuni; the tribe objected, fearing it would affect their own supply. The parties skirted a suit then, with the understanding they would settle their rights later. The tribe's involvement in the Zuni River Basin suit, March said, is an outgrowth of that.

The tribe, they said, was simply attempting to define its water rights like everyone else in order to protect its own needs.

Attorneys say the suit will take years to settle. In hopes of speeding things up, a band of defendants is asking the U.S. District Court to seek the New Mexico Supreme Court's opinion on whether the state engineer even has the rights to set a new limit on domestic wells. It's entirely up to the District Court whether it wants to refer the question, and up to the Supreme Court if its wants to answer. The defendants are waiting for the District Court's decision.

The next status conference is scheduled for April.