This week the Utton Transboundary Resources Center and the American Indian Law Center, Inc. at the University of New Mexico School of Law will host “The Future of Water Rights: The Winters Centennial – Will Its Commitment to Justice Endure,” a symposium on Native American water rights from Monday, June 9 through Thursday, June 12 at the Hyatt Regency Tamaya on Santa Ana Pueblo.
100 years after the 1908 Winters vs. United States Supreme Court decision, affirming tribal water rights claims to the Milk River in Montana over competing claims of later settlers, many Native American Tribes still have inadequate water for their domestic, economic, cultural and spiritual needs. Developing additional water resources necessary to fulfill tribal rights, while not reducing other necessary uses of water in the same area, will be a future concern for the federal government.
These are a few of the examples of the current impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in the Winters case:
· How the Pueblos upstream on the Rio Grande utilize their water will greatly influence Albuquerque’s future water supply.
· Unresolved tribal rights to the Colorado River add to other uncertainties, such as rapid growth and climate change, faced by water managers in the water-short states of Arizona California, Colorado Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.
· Massive litigation (costing hundreds of millions of dollars) has been under way for decades in almost every western state, prosecuted largely to quantify reserved water right claims.
Yellowstone’s geysers and other geothermal features are protected by an agreement, premised on the reserved rights doctrine, between the National Park Service and the State of Montana.