Outside of the Navajo Nation Water Management Branch where Jonah and the Rockies Fellows met with Jason John.
Navajo Nation Environmental Protection Agency (NNEPA), which, like the federal EPA and state agencies, is a comprehensive environmental regulation agency that houses all tribal management delegated through the TAS system. Jason John, the principal hydrologist at the Navajo Nation Water Management Branch, highlighted the vital importance of the NNEPA during our field research. While discussing water infrastructure in the Navajo Nation, Mr. John claimed that the Navajo Nation had over $700,000,000 in water infrastructure needs. This amounts to nearly 40% of the Navajo people not being connected to a public water system. By forming NNEPA, which manages public water systems, the Navajo Nation is now able to coordinate water systems with nearby cities, an arrangement that benefits all parties. Through visiting with tribes, I learned the seriousness of water quality issues facing Native Americans in the Southwest and the importance of the TAS system in ensuring tribes can address their water quality needs. Because Native American reservations are seen as “domestic dependent nations,” tribal governments exist in a sort of political limbo: their sovereignty is poorly-defined in law so in the perpetual tug-of-war that is state versus federal rights, tribal governments are regularly relegated to a lower, less powerful position. Both the
Pueblo of Isleta and Navajo Nation case studies show that tribes’ historical lack of political power to control water quality not only poses an immediate threat to human health and welfare, but is also damaging to tribal enterprises, agriculture, economic development, and the sustenance of traditional practices and knowledge. Cumulatively, this degrades the sovereign status of tribes and reinforces “domestic dependency.” However, after meeting with people at the Pueblo of Isleta and the Navajo Reservation, I learned that tribes are making substantial moves to recapture their sovereignty under the TAS program and gain some of the environmental management options that have been available to states for decades. While water quality is often the ignored factor when discussing water rights, I have learned through my State of the Rockies research that quality and quantity are inseparable facets of the same resource. Native American tribes are especially familiar with this connection, making them pivotal stakeholders in the future of water management in the Southwest. - Jonah’s full report on Native American sovereignty and water quality rights in the Southwest will be released in the 2016 State of the Rockies Report. -
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