On March 7, Stephen Roe Lewis, chairman of the Gila River Indian Community, was Jill Biden’s guest to watch President Joe Biden deliver his State of the Union address. He said he was told by White House staff that he was the first tribal guest to sit inside the Presidential box at that annual event.
A year ago, he was a guest at Biden’s 2023 State of the Union address — that time at Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s invitation.
His tribe he controls the single biggest share of Central Arizona Project water held by any user — 311,000 acre feet. That’s more than double Tucson’s CAP allocation.
Throughout the past decade, Lewis and the Gila River tribe in general have been at the forefront of Arizona’s water issues — coming up with visionary and bold water conservation proposals and innovative solutions.
They include a just-launched, federally financed project to cover some of their irrigation canals with solar panels to reduce evaporation of their water. Lewis has said the Gilas have conserved about 910,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water total. That’s almost as much as the CAP has been delivering annually to customers in the Tucson and Phoenix areas in recent years.
Over the next few months and years, it will become clear just how much clout Lewis and the tribe actually have.
They will try to overturn a priority system for distributing river water that has favored the richer and more populous California over Arizona for 56 years.
In the past two weeks Lewis, either in person or through a tribal attorney, has spoken out publicly and passionately against a proposal by Arizona and the other two Lower Colorado River Basin states’ water officials to curb river water use. The proposal’s purpose is to prevent the river’s reservoirs from falling to disastrously low levels.
The states’ officials have heralded their plan as an innovative, almost revolutionary blueprint, one that will wipe out a long-standing structural deficit of river water use compared to its supply. They say it will prevent Lakes Mead and Powell from ever falling to “dead pool,” in which the reservoirs will be so low that no water can be delivered from them.
But Lewis says this proposal is still inequitable, favoring California over the other Lower Basin states. That’s even though Arizona officials say they’ve gotten the best deal out of California they’ve ever gotten. Lewis also says this plan fails to offer a path to mitigate the heavy losses of river water the tribe expects to bear.
“There are elements of the plan that we support … (but) the community regrets that overall, the community can’t support it,” Lewis told the University of Arizona’s Water Resources Research Center conference at UA’s Student Union building on Wednesday.
After his talk, Lewis told reporters the Gila community will present its own proposal for water shortage-sharing “in weeks” to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The tribe wants the bureau to analyze it as part of a broader environmental review it will conduct of separate plans from the Lower Basin and Upper Basin states’ water officials.
(Nevada is the third Lower Basin state. The Upper Basin states are Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming.)
Water officials of all three Lower Basin states declined to comment on Lewis’ position in response to inquiries from the Star. Lewis’ comments, when read bv tribal attorney Don Pongrace, also drew no response from the more than 15 water officials from across Arizona who attended a March 6 meeting of an Arizona water advisory committee in Phoenix.
Several water experts in academia told the Star that the Gilas’ opposition to the Lower Basin plan will or could complicate the effort to get it approved. Already, the Lower Basin plan is competing with an Upper Basin states’ plan that is radically different from theirs.
No expert could say whether the Gilas can outmuscle California’s clout. But professor Elizabeth Koebele of the University of Nevada-Reno said she thinks it’s “very savvy” on the Gilas’ part to be offering a separate, competing proposal.
While the seven basin states “set the agenda” for these negotiations by releasing their proposals first, having a tribal proposal shows that tribes want more than to “just be in the room for the negotiations — they want equitable outcomes.” Because she expects and hopes environmentalists and perhaps other interest groups to submit their own proposals, the Gilas’ proposal won’t by itself directly hold up federal approval of a final plan.
“Working directly with the federal government, (which) holds tribal water rights ‘in trust,’ could put more weight behind a forthcoming tribal proposal,” said Koebele, an associate political science professor.
‘Sustainable management’
The Lower Basin plan — and the tribe’s opposition — were first laid out to a group of water officials at a March 6 meeting of the Arizona Reconsultation Committee. It’s intended to help form a statewide position of water officials on how a new plan should be developed for operating the river and its reservoirs. The plan would replace operating guidelines established in 2007.
The meeting was at the time closed to the public. It ended minutes before the Lower Basin states publicly released their new plan at a press briefing. The Arizona Department of Water Resources posted online an archived recording of the committee meeting later.
“We intend to provide for sustainable management of the Colorado River system and its resources under a wide range of future system conditions,” ADWR Director Tom Buschatzke told the gathering.
In particular, he cited the proposal’s plan to base future water use curbs on the amount of water in seven major river reservoirs.
“This idea of doing this on a system basis is new, and it’s not how it’s been done. It’s been (just) Lake Powell and Lake Mead,” he said.
Under this proposal, the Lower Basin states’ water use would be cut by 0 to 1.5 million acre-feet a year when the seven reservoirs hold between 70% and 58% of their total water storage capacity, Buschatzke said.
Between 58% and 38% full, the level at which the states expect the reservoirs will most often be, the Lower Basin will cut use by a flat 1.5 million acre-feet a year. Right now, the seven reservoirs are 42% full, officials said at the March 6 meeting.
Noting the Bureau of Reclamation recently concluded the river system loses 1.3 million acre-feet a year to evaporation, Buschatzke said, “We’re doing a little bit more than (saving) that” much water.
When the reservoirs are in that range of their storage capacity, Arizona will lose 760,000 acre-feet of river water a year, California will lose 440,000 and Nevada would lose 50,000. Mexico would give up another 250,000 under the new plan, although it still has to sign off on that amount.
These cuts are significantly more for both Arizona and California than the most severe cuts either state will have to take under the 2019 drought contingenxcy plan, he noted.
Once the system drops below 38% full, Upper and Lower Basin states would share the cuts 50-50, whereas before the Lower Basin would absorb all the cuts. If the system drops to 23% full or worse, the two basins would split 3.9 million acre-feet of total cuts.
But “we have not come up with a way, or a formula, for sharing those cuts among the three Lower Basin states, and certainly not the Upper (Basin) states,” Buschatzke said.
Speaking of the Arizona-California-Nevada split of cuts that would occur, Buschatzke said of Arizona, “We’re still taking a bigger percentage (of cuts).”
Explaining how those three states determined the split, he said, “This was equity, this was climate change, this was some look at the priority system and the interpretations of the priority system.”
Also, the 2007 guidelines and the 2019 drought plan “were certainly not ignored on how we came to agreement at the end of the day on these numbers,” he said.
Buschatzke also noted that if the reservoirs ever rise high enough again to be in a surplus condition — in which water must be released to avoid flooding or a spill of water over the reservoir tops — the new Lower Basin plan calls for Arizona to get the first 240,000 acre-feet of water released before California gets any.
This seems to be a fairly significant concession on the part of California, committee alternative member Rob Anderson, a Phoenix real estate attorney, told Buschatzke. California has traditionally had more clout in these matters because the 1968 federal law authorizing CAP’s construction said Arizona would have to lose all of its CAP water during river shortages before California lost any.
“Am I misreading that?” said Anderson, representing the Home Builders Association of Central Arizona.
“You are not misreading that,” Buschatzke replied.
“They (California officials) are stepping up to the plate. I think it’s a great jumping off point. We still have a lot of work to do,” he said.
He described the plan as a new system — “This is a new time, very complicated, we’ve never seen something like this before.”
He added, “If we had thought about this in 2007 … Perhaps this would have performed really well. We probably would not have been in the shape we’re in.”
‘A strong message’
But at Wednesday’s UA water conference, Lewis said of the Lower Basin states’ plan, “The (Gila) community will stand firm, and oppose it at every turn. This is a strong message to you today. It’s intended to be.”
The proposal not only isn’t fair between Arizona and California, it’s also not a fair split between the Lower and Upper Basin states, he said.
The Upper Basin proposal calls for that region to take no additional cuts, on the grounds that its states use far less water than those in the Lower Basin. The Upper Basin states have already seen repeated annual shortages on the river’s tributaries where many farmers normally take river water, their officials say.
The Lower Basin states should take cuts on a “pro rata” basis, in proportion to the amount of water each state uses, he said. The same formula should be applied for allocating among the states the river water that’s lost to evaporation, Lewis said.
The cuts also must be shared equitably among CAP water users and among Arizona farmers and other users operating along the river, he said. Legally, those users also have higher priorities for river water than the Gilas and other CAP users.
“All of us within the state must be prepared to use less water,” he told the water conference. “We will oppose any cuts we do not feel are equitable and fair.”
“What we’re looking for is consistency, fairness across the board, so no group or stakeholder is unduly burdened,” Lewis told reporters after his talk at Wednesday’s UA conference.
If evaporation isn’t directly taken into account, “it makes tribal water rights more vulnerable to cuts,” he said.
“In a consensus approach, water should never be taken through cuts involuntarily from the tribes,” he told reporters.
In Lewis’ statement read on March 6, he also said the Lower Basin states’ plan doesn’t provide enough detail to address what will happen “when we reach critical elevations” in the reservoirs.
“We remain deeply concerned about the basin-wide reductions proposed when and if we reach the lower, critical elevations, which appears almost certain that we will and perhaps frequently,” his statement said.
As for mitigation, he suggested authorities find an additional water source to recharge into aquifers in the Butler Valley area west of Phoenix. From there, the water eventually could be transported to Phoenix via the CAP canal, he said.
Without adequate mitigation, “for us, that would constitute a trust violation, that our partners are very well aware the community will vigorously fight if necessary,” Lewis’ statement said.
While in the past the Gilas and other tribes complained they had been shut out of federal-state discussions over the river, this time Lewis said he felt the tribe was adequately consulted.
“We’re committed to finding a consensual approach with our state and federal partners in the coming months, but this proposal as presented today is not it,” Lewis said.
Gilas ‘very influential’
Lewis’ objections could have an impact on the basin states’ negotiations, said Sharon Megdal, the Water Resources Research Center’s director.
“Obviously, they are very influential. They have been extremely important to agreements in the Lower Basin,” Megdal said.
“I’m not a lawyer, but the Gila River Indian Community has been active in defending the water rights it got in the settlement,” said Megdal, referring to the 2004 legal settlement it obtained through congressional legislation that provided its 311,000 acre-feet of CAP rights.
“I don’t think they’ll be shy about going to court if that’s required,” she added. “I do think it’s a very serious objection that he voiced at the conference.”
Kathryn Sorensen, research director for Arizona State University’s water research center, recalled that during negotiations over the 2019 Drought Contingency Plan, the Gilas and the city of Phoenix successfully partnered to fight an original water shortage-sharing plan. The plan that was ultimately adopted was largely in the form those two entities had envisioned, said Sorensen, Phoenix’s water director at the time.
“I thnk the Gila River Indian Community is very influential. Their Governor Lewis is a very strong leader — very forward-thinking and strategic,” said Sorensen, now of ASU’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.
The center’s director, Sarah Porter, said she doesn’t know if there’s a way to get an approved plan without the Gila River Indian Community on board.
“It’s conceivable, but they’ve been such a significant player in conservation, I don’t know how Arizona could get along without the Gilas,” she said.
But she doesn’t know if the Gilas’ stance will be enough to force higher priority water users in California such as the Imperial Irrigation District near El Centro and Yuma to make bigger concessions.
“It’s my sense is that everybody would prefer to have an agreement and to have as many entities as possible on board, to minimize the chance of prolonged litigation. But it’s really hard to say,” she said. “In the end, (the California users) still have higher priority rights. That really kind of trumps some of these other arguments.”
