Ulibarri urges panel to buy water rights

By Jim Maniaci
Cibola County Bureau

GRANTS — Cibola County Manager David Ulibarri recommended to the Cibola County Water Board that the county government should tap into the governor's special reserve fund for capital improvements to buy water rights at Monday's meeting in the Cibola County Commission meeting room.

Until nominees can be selected to fill the seats on the water board, county commissioners are acting as board members.

The county manager said the governor has been setting aside 10 percent of his capital improvement budget to pay for water projects throughout New Mexico. He also said that the state will some day require water distributors to have water rights, and the county thus could protect its residents by owning water rights it could provide.

Board member Frank Emerson backed that up later in the discussion by calling for the county "to trap some of that and buy water rights."

After presentations by Barbara Russell of the North West New Mexico Council of Governments in Gallup, board members Bennie Cohoe, Fred Scott, Emerson and Dr. Jane Pitts agreed to have Ulibarri write letters of invitation to the leaders of various groups asking them to nominate a representative to the future Cibola County Water Advisory Board. When the new board is organized, the commission will terminate the current board. The new board's function will be to advise the commission, which has the decision-making power by state law.

Russell told the group she was there to find out what the board had in mind and would relay it to her superiors, Patty Lundstrom and Jeff Kiely, in Gallup. She waited until the end of the meeting to tell the board Lundstrom had recommended waiting until July, the start of the new fiscal year, before working on the water board.

That perturbed Cohoe even more as he had made several statements that the "COG" is supposed to provide technical support to the county, which pays $15,000 a year for the service. Russell advised she was sure the county was receiving more than the $15,000 in service. He said he was tired of waiting, that he didn't like being led like a sheep, and that the COG was starting to look like the Navajo Nation. Cohoe is a former Navajo Nation Council delegate.

His anti-Window Rock attitude arose again when the group discussed membership on the new board, having listed the Navajo Nation. Cohoe said in no uncertain terms that the Din representation should be the Ramah Navajo Chapter, not the main central government where nothing gets accomplished.

Emerson said, "We definitely have to get all the entities involved. This (the commission as the board) is just to get this thing started."

Cohoe told Russell that without an official entity, no money could be obtained to have a voice in what the decisions are with the county writing its own plan, setting its own goals and revising them if necessary.

He supported Ulibarri's earlier statement by asking, "If we don't own a drop of water, how can we have a voice?" He reminded everyone that when the original regional water plan was adopted, Cibola and McKinley counties voted for it. San Juan County boycotted it because that county's leaders opposed the Gallup-Navajo Project. Since then the state has redrawn the regional boundaries from the artificial county lines to match hydrologic regions more closely. The result of this is some of McKinley County is in the San Juan River region while the rest of McKinley County is joined with Cibola County.

Cohoe also commented that if the commission just threw names out there and didn't get things organized first, "others with their watchdogs their lawyers will make us the laughing stock of the state." And not setting up the umbrella board with participation from Zuni, Navajo, Acoma, Laguna, the land grant associations, the municipalities and other major stakeholders would result "in a dust devil, with each pulling their own way and we won't get anywhere."

Ulibarri said the very first project should be to document how much water there actually is. When the Colorado River Compact was drawn up, the seven states estimated 15 million acre-feet a year of water, while the historic average has been 12-13 million acre-feet and may be decreasing due to the drought cycle.

The board then reviewed the by-laws adopted almost two years ago, with Russell to present a proposed schedule for the Council of Governments' technical assistance when the Cibola County Commission meets Monday.

— To contact reporter Jim Maniaci in Grants, telephone 285-6184 or (505) 870-7775 (cellular).