Southern Ute Tribe taps Animas–La Plata water rights after 60 years of roadblocks

By Shannon Mullane | Colorado Sun

For years, two tribes have pointed to the barely used, multimillion-dollar project near Durango to show tribal water access challenges in the Colorado River Basin

This summer, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe rolled out miles of temporary rubber water lines. The above-ground tubes had one job: carrying water to oil and gas operations on the reservation.

But the pipelines also represent something else: a historic moment in a drawn-out, arduous debate over water in southwestern Colorado.

In May, the Southern Ute Indian Tribe tapped into its water in the controversial Animas-La Plata Project, the first time a tribe has used its water from the project since it was authorized in 1968.

The Animas-La Plata Project has come to encapsulate long-held dreams to develop Western water — and the decades of debates, environmental concerns, local objections and Congressional maneuvering that almost made the project fail.

At the center of it all were tribal nations and the chance to, once and for all, settle all of the tribal water claims in Colorado. It took until 2011 to fill Lake Nighthorse, the main feature of a heavily scaled-down federal water project located just south of Durango. Then 14 more years for a tribe to be able to use a small slice of its water.

More barriers — tied to interstate laws, finances and infrastructure — still stand in the way of tribes and other Animas-La Plata water users taking full advantage of the multimillion-dollar project.

“This has taken the hard work of many Tribal leaders and Tribal staff over many decades to get to where we are at now,” the Southern Ute Indian Tribe said in a prepared statement.

All Animas-La Plata Project water users can access water both in the reservoir, Lake Nighthorse, and the Animas River, but they draw from the river first. The reservoir functions like a savings account, said Russ Howard, the general manager for the Animas project.

This year, the tribe used water from the Animas River for oil and gas well completion activities, which wrapped up in mid-July. The tribe declined to provide more details.

It plans to use the revenue from the project to upgrade dilapidated irrigation systems, like the deteriorating federal Pine River Indian Irrigation Project, or other water-related projects, like infrastructure to access its Animas-La Plata Project water.

The Southern Ute Tribe and its sister tribe in Colorado, the Ute Mountain Ute Indian Tribe, have repeatedly brought up their lack of access to the Animas project in high-level conversations about tribal water access in the broader Colorado River Basin and how to manage the basin’s overstressed water supplies once key management rules expire in 2026.

The Colorado River Basin is the lifeblood of the American Southwest, providing water to 40 million people, cities from Denver to Los Angeles, industries and a multibillion-dollar agriculture industry. The Colorado River’s headwaters are in western Colorado, but its water finds its way to faucets, ditches and hoses in every corner of the state.

Tribal nations have federally recognized rights to about 26% of the Colorado River’s average flow between 2000 and 2018. But they’re not using all of this water. In some cases, they’re still going through legal processes to finalize their rights. In others, they are working on finding funding for new pipes, reservoirs and canals to access their water.

In some cases, downstream water users have become reliant on water while tribes are sorting out their water rights. But tribes say they are actively working on ways to put their water to use, which could push nontribal water users down the priority list.

“The Tribe wants everyone to understand that there currently is a reliance on undeveloped tribal water,” the Southern Ute statement said. “It is important for everyone to understand that the Southern Ute Indian Tribe has the right to develop its water resources and plans to do so.”

A big dream for the Southwest

People have been crafting different versions of an Animas-La Plata Project since at least 1904. 

In the 1970s, they were drawing up maps showing a dam across the Animas River, also called El Río de las Ánimas Perdidas or the River of Lost Souls, to create the Howardsville Reservoir north of Durango. Other new reservoirs, plus hundreds of miles of canals and ditches, would provide irrigation water for both Native and non-Native farmers. The “Animas Mountain Reservoir” would provide drinking water for Durango. There would be plenty of water for irrigation, municipal and industrial users in the Southwest.

It was the age of water development in the West, led by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and anything seemed possible. 

Only, none of that happened.

That’s according to piles of manila folders, labeled in scrawling cursive, in the archives at Fort Lewis College’s Center of Southwest Studies. There, thousands of pages of documents reveal how, exactly, the big dream fell apart and a small, but vital, version survived. 

READ THE FULL STORY AT THE COLORADO SUN