The Navajo Nation filed a lawsuit in 2003 arguing that the U.S. government has a duty to assess the nation’s water needs and ensure it has enough. After lengthy litigation, that case is now before the Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments on Monday.
NAVAJO NATION, N.M. — Her hands gripping the steering wheel, Marilyn Help-Hood gingerly drove her rugged Ford pickup truck along rutted unpaved roads, occasionally sliding in the mud, in search of one thing: water.
As part of the tribe’s efforts to assert control over its long-term future, it filed a long-shot lawsuit in 2003 arguing that the U.S. government has a duty to assess the nation’s water needs and ensure it has enough. After lengthy litigation, that case is now before the Supreme Court, which hears oral arguments on Monday.
The lack of water and the infrastructure needed to pipe it across the vast reaches of the more than 17 million acre reservation — larger than the state of West Virginia — which straddles parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, remains one of the biggest challenges facing Navajo leaders. At another stop on the tour, about an hour north of Help-Hood’s home, the Litson family talked about its struggles in getting water for its cattle ranch spread out over a hillside dotted with sagebrush. Dorthea Litson, whose family has farmed there for generations, bemoaned a storm that had knocked out a windmill that powers a water well.Dorthea Litson next to the broken windmill that powers a water well.
A 1922 compact divided the Colorado River into its upper and lower sections, and water allocation in the lower basin was addressed six years later by an act of Congress that also led to the construction of the Hoover Dam farther downstream on the Arizona-Nevada border. In the current Supreme Court case, the federal government says the tribe is seeking to reopen already decided cases that determine how water in the Lower Colorado River is allocated. The tribe counters that it is not seeking a decision on those rights specifically.
“The United States has a general trust relationship with Indian tribes. But the existence of that general relationship does not itself establish any judicially enforceable duties against the United States,” she wrote.
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