By Laura Smith – University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar joined New Mexico Senators Jeff Bingaman (D), Tom Udall (D, and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D) Thursday to sign the “Record of Decision for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Planning Report and Final Environment Impact Statement.”
The project will provide clean water to a quarter of a million people in the Navajo Nation, the City of Gallup and the Jicarilla Apache Nation in New Mexico through annual diversions of 37,376 acre-feet of water from the San Juan River. The project will include 260 miles of pipeline, 24 pumping plants and two water treatment plants.
Salazar said this project is long overdue, and the action would allow them to move forward in helping empower and improve Native American communities.
“This project addresses an unfulfilled promise to support the Navajo people by providing a long-term sustainable water supply that will reduce the need for hauling water, improve health conditions on the Reservation, and provide the foundation for future economic development activity in northwestern New Mexico,” he said.
Sen. Udall said he can’t think of anything more important than the basic right to have drinkable water at home, and he said it’s been so long since the Navajo nation has had that.
“I think 33 percent of the people in the Navajo nation haul water to their homes. And when you think about the distances and where they get the water, miles and miles spent in pick up trucks going from hogans into a community where there’s water and hauling it back. If all of us were doing that at our homes, so it would take up so much time, we’d have to clear the decks of all the other things we have to do,” he said.
Sen. Bingaman said the implementation of the act was good for the people of the Navajo nation, the people of Gallup and the people of Jicarilla Apache, and for all involved.
“A few years ago…I was there in Gallup on a meeting, and encountered a great skepticism that, first of all, that this would ever become law, and second, that this would ever be built,” he said.
Rep. Lujan said water is critical to everyone, and this is an opportunity to provide water resources and infrastructure to a part of the country that has been neglected.
“Many tribal communities on the Navajo nation do not have access to a relievable water supply, and the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project will provide many of these communities with stable and reliable access to water,” Lujan said.
