WASHINGTON — On the nation's largest Native American reservation – spanning 16 million-acres across Arizona, New Mexico and Utah – one in three households lacks running water, according to the Navajo Nation.
At the Supreme Court on Monday, the tribe will face off with the federal government and a group of states over what it calls a"broken promise" to bolster the reservation's water supply.
It wants the Interior Department to assess the reservation's water needs and develop a plan to meet them, which experts say would most likely involve diverting more water from the Colorado River. "No substantive source of law expressly establishes the particular duty that the Navajo Nation asserts," the government said in a court filing.
The states – Arizona, Colorado and Nevada – argue the Navajo Nation should never have been able to bring the claim in the first place, since the Supreme Court has asserted exclusive jurisdiction over disputes involving the Colorado River in a series of decisions and decrees over decades.
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