The states that share the Colorado River have a new federal framework for managing the waterway amid climate change and aridification.
But the impact of the federal government’s management strategy on tribal nations, some of which hold some of the most senior water rights on the river, is unclear, and appears to vary from tribe to tribe depending on the circumstances.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Final Environmental Impact Statement comes after negotiations for a new plan to share the river broke down between Upper and Lower Basin states.
A concrete plan that could potentially detail steep cuts to Arizona’s share of the river in 2027 and 2028 is expected to be announced in the coming days. The overall framework released last week would allow cuts to Arizona, California and Nevada’s Colorado River allocations by up to 40%.
However, while the states that depend on the river receive more clarity in the form of the bureau’s framework, the water rights of some tribal nations remain unquantified.
“These post-2026 guidelines regarding the next 10 years of water … in a sense, it does disappoint me as one delegate of the Navajo Nation Council,” says Brenda Jesus, who represents Oaksprings and St. Michaels. “Number one being the fact that the Navajo Nation was never invited back in the 1920s to have a position, or even be at the table, at the drafting of the Colorado River Compact.”
The 1922 compact, signed by the seven states that share the river, has been the bedrock of river management for decades. The only mention of tribes in the compact comes in Article VII, which states, “Nothing in this compact shall be construed as affecting the obligations of the United States of America to Indian tribes.”
Some tribes are entitled to a big chunk of the river since they have senior water rights, but many lack the infrastructure to transport it to their permanent homelands on reservations. That includes the Navajo Nation.
A federal settlement to bring Colorado River water to the Navajo, Hopi and San Juan Southern Paiute tribes is being blocked in Congress by Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico.
Jesus says it’s unfair that the states have a framework of a plan to share the river, while her tribe’s water rights in Arizona aren’t settled. While serving on the council, Jesus has been active on water and natural resources issues.
“I just don't understand that they've gotten their water rights decree, yet in the year 2026, the Navajo Nation doesn't have any,” Jesus says. “I perceive that the Navajo Nation has been locked into a perpetual underdevelopment. It's not fair.”
The White Mountain Apache Tribe in eastern Arizona also lacks the infrastructure to access its share of Colorado River water from the Central Arizona Project, or CAP, an aqueduct with junior rights that diverts river water to central Arizona.
But unlike the Navajo Nation, this tribe’s water rights have been quantified: A not-yet-effective settlement entitles it to 52,000 acre-feet of water per year. Of that total, 27,000 acre-feet comes from the watersheds of the Salt and Little Colorado rivers, while 25,000 acre-feet comes from CAP. The tribe is able to lease some of its CAP allocation to various cities in central Arizona.
The cuts proposed by the bureau under its environmental impact statement are expected to result in significant reductions to CAP, something that worries Orlando Carroll, the chairman of the White Mountain Apache Tribe.
“We would like more information on this,” says Carroll. “We are in the position to protect that [water] interest that was allocated to us, and so this [environmental impact statement] would have an impact on that agreement. We just need to make sure that, along with other tribes, we stand together to stand up for what should … remain as part of our allocation to that water resource.”
In its environmental impact statement, the bureau lists the tribe among others with CAP water rights but doesn’t assign it a specific reduction yet, according to a report from the White Mountain Independent. That could change, however, as new rules for managing the river are released.
Heather Tanana, an assistant professor of law at the University of Denver and citizen of the Navajo Nation, says tribes that are entitled to CAP water, like the White Mountain Apache, have allocations that are counted against the state’s total portion of Colorado River water.
In other words, when a tribe makes full use of its water rights, it lowers the total amount available to the state it’s located in.
That could mean some Arizona tribes that rely on the CAP system for their water deliveries could be affected by Lower Basin reductions.
“The federal government still has their treaty and trust responsibilities to tribes,” says Tanana. “They hold water in trust for the benefit of tribes. … So, is there an argument there for the tribes to say, ‘Well, you may be making these cuts elsewhere, but that all stems from the Law of the River and the compact, and our rights need to be protected, even amongst these other cuts to stakeholders.’”
She says the dispute could ultimately lead to litigation.
Aside from the White Mountain Apache Tribe, Tanana says others — like the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in southwestern Colorado — are concerned that if there are cuts to their water, they might not be able to get domestic drinking water to their communities.
In her view, there’s a disparity between the new federal framework between the states and the lack of a Colorado River settlement for tribes in northern Arizona.
“I think there's just a lot of hiding behind the prior interpretations of the [1922] compact,” she says. “We have to look at the reality today. These states have all benefited from these tribes not utilizing their water, it's not equitable to keep them in these conditions, right? Where they're having to haul [water], they can't have the same development that all the other states and their communities were able to do.”
