Leaders seeking water money

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — Telling a panel of skeptical U.S. senators that the city could come up with its $40 million share of the Navajo-Gallup water pipeline was the easy part. Figuring out how will take some work.

A team of city, county, state and tribal officials met inside Gallup City Hall Monday afternoon to get started.

State Rep. Patricia Lundstrom knew she did not have the answer when the Natural Resources Committee posed the question to her during a June 27 hearing in Washington. But after decades of local planning already behind the pipeline, an ambitious multimillion dollar plan to secure the tribe's and city's water futures, she wasn't about to equivocate.

"We're not in a position to say no," said Lundstrom, who convened Monday's meeting in her role as executive director of the Northwest New Mexico Council of Governments, a regional planning group that's been the glue holding the myriad agencies involved in the project together. "We've been at this for too long."

So she said yes. But the committee wants details, and Lundstrom hopes to have some by the time Sen. Pete Domenici, its ranking Republican, visits Gallup next week. Domenici and Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman introduced a bill that would approve federal funding for the pipeline in April.

Telling them how Gallup will come up with its share won't be easy. For one thing, it doesn't even know exactly what its share will be. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's last estimate for the pipeline rang in at just over $716 million. Gallup Joint Utilities Director Lance Allgood said the city's responsibility would be 20 percent. Although Domenici is proposing to cover three quarters of that with federal funding, that still leaves Gallup with $35.8 million. But the Bureau of Reclamation is reevaluating its estimate for the project, and the price tag could shoot up. Allgood is expecting something over $40 million.

Bill Hume, Gov. Bill Richardson's senior policy advisor, attended Monday's meeting to offer the administration's support. Whenever Gallup was ready to ask for money, he said, "my expectation is that the state will be responsive."

City officials are hoping for a little more, like a percent of the $40 million the state is willing to share, Allgood said.

"And, of course," he added, "the higher the number the better."

Two McKinley County commissioners and their attorney were also on hand Monday. None could offer a firm commitment of financial support to the pipeline, however, not even a simple yes or no, let alone a figures. But if the county weren't interested in helping, Commissioner David Dallago said, "we wouldn't be here."

It wasn't much, but it was a start. The group plans to meet again in the coming days.

They'll have other questions to answer as well. Bingaman wants to know if a recent decision by the Navajo Nation's Intergovernmental Relations Committee to reject a memorandum of understanding with Gallup portends future problems for the pipeline.

Although the city is guaranteed use of the pipeline, pending federal approval, it has no water to fill it with. The memo would have named a source, probably some of the Navajo Nation's reserves. Some tribal delegates, however, jeer at the thought of sharing their water with Gallup. But if Gallup fails to get any water out of the deal, Bingaman and Domenici have promised to scuttle federal approval of the entire project.

"They made that crystal clear," Lundstrom said.

John Leeper, who's been negotiating the memo for the Navajo Nation's Department of Water Resources, urged them not to worry. Some of the language, he said, created the impression unintentionally that Navajo communities around Gallup would only get their share of water from the pipeline after the city had some of its own needs met. A few semantic adjustments, he suspected, would clear away the objections.

Michael Benson, who works under Leeper, suspected the jeering had more to do with political grandstanding. But after generations of finding itself short-changed in water settlement after water settlement, he added, it was only natural for the tribe to move cautiously.