A water-deprived tribe could finally get a cut of the Colorado River — if Congress OKs it

By Annie Snider | 07/18/2024 01:20 PM EDT

The settlement comes with a steep $5 billion price tag and runs headlong into a fierce dispute between upstream and downstream states.

Cecil Joe fills up his water tanker for water delivery to fellow members of the Navajo Nation.

How Congress approaches the Navajo Nation settlement will test the vows that top state and Biden administration officials have made to accommodate the tribes with claims to the Colorado River. Spencer Platt/AFP via Getty Images

One in 3 households on the Navajo Nation lacks access to safe drinking water, but a $5 billion deal reached in May could change that by giving the sprawling reservation’s 175,000 residents rights to the highly prized Colorado River.

The agreement needs Congress’ blessing, though. And there are plenty of reasons for pessimism.

Those include the eye-popping price tag, as well as controversial provisions granting the tribe the right to move water across legal boundaries and lease its supplies to cities or farms. Those issues inject the settlement squarely into the heated negotiations over how to parcel out the Colorado River’s diminishing flows among the seven states that rely on it.

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Advocates for the Navajo settlement say it is a matter of basic human rights. The reservation is not only the country’s largest but also one of its poorest. Residents drive hours over unpaved roads to haul water. Without access to sanitation, Covid-19 tore a deadly path through the population during the pandemic.

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