Established by treaty in 1868, the modern boundaries of the Navajo Nation span 27,000 square miles across the deserts of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. While its water rights were guaranteed on paper in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1908 Winters decision, getting actual “wet water” to meet the needs of the nation’s 175,000 residents remains a challenge.

This month the Utton Center’s Water Matters speaks with attorney Bidtah Becker, a University of New Mexico School of Law graduate who has been serving the Navajo Nation for two decades.

Becker talks about the challenges of making good on the Supreme Court’s 1908 promise of Native American water rights in a legal landscape fractured by state borders that require the Navajo Nation to negotiate a legal and political landscape to deal with Congress and representatives of the seven U.S. Colorado River Basin states.

Becker talks about the progress being made in building a water pipeline through the eastern edge of the Navajo Nation – the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project.

She also talks about the challenges facing the Navajo Nation’s efforts to settle its water rights in Arizona, and bring water to communities in the western Navajo Nation, through the Northeastern Arizona Indian Water Rights Settlement Act of 2025.

Water Matters! is written by Rin Tara and John Fleck of the Utton Transboundary Resource Center, with production and editorial assistance from Francesca Glaspell. Our logo and music were created by Sairis Perez-Gomez.

With one of the worst winter snowpacks on record, New Mexico’s water supply forecasts for 2025 look grim. Can we avoid the apocalypse? The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Rin Tara and John Fleck talk to Diane Agnew of the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority about adapting to the realities of a changing climate.

At a time in early spring when the Rio Grande should be rising, swollen with snowmelt, the Rio Grande through Albuquerque is shrinking instead. In a good year river water imported across the Continental Divide from Colorado can meet the majority of Albuquerque’s drinking water needs. But not this year. By May, Albuquerque will likely have to turn off its river water diversions, falling back to the use of water pumped from the aquifer beneath the city, explains Agnew, Albuquerque’s water rights manager.

While the news is stark, the taps will keep flowing. And there are hopeful signs about the collaboration needed for the community to get through a water short future, including collaboration with the valley’s agricultural water users, served by the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, to help stretch this year’s short supplies. It’s a demonstration that, in the face of challenges, we still have choices as a community about the kind of water future we want to have.

Resources:

• Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority Water 2120 long-range plan
• The San Juan-Chama Project
• Tracking the flow of the Rio Grande: real time US Geological Survey gage at Albuquerque’s Central Avenue Bridge

The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Water Matters! podcast looks at water and natural resources issues in New Mexico and beyond. Housed at the University of New Mexico School of Law, the Utton Transboundary Resources Center believes in the pursuit of well informed, collaborative solutions to our natural resource challenges. The Utton Transboundary Resources Center’s Sairis Perez-Gomez designed the podcast logo and wrote and performed our theme music and Student Research Assistant Francesca Glaspell produced this episode.

Rin Tara is a staff attorney specializing in water policy and governance at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center. They are primarily interested in questions of water management in the face of climate change. They have done work in riparian restoration, river connectivity, tribal water sovereignty, climate change adaptation, and water rights. They have authored several papers on topics related to the future of western water management.

John Fleck is Writer in Residence at the Utton Transboundary Resources Center, University of New Mexico School of Law; and Professor of Practice in Water Policy and Governance in the University of New Mexico Department of Economics. The former director of the University of New Mexico’s Water Resources Program, he is the author of four books on water in the west, including the forthcoming history of Albuquerque’s relationship with the Rio Grande – Ribbons of Green: The Rio Grande and the Making of a Modern American City.