Tribal influence over Arizona water growing

TUCSON, Ariz. (CN) — When Father Eusebio Kino, a Jesuit priest and explorer for the Spanish crown, came into what is now southern Arizona from Mexico in 1692, he was greeted by irrigated farms sprawling incongruously across the Sonoran Desert.

The Tohono O’odham, among the first tribes Kino encountered near what is now Tucson, and others had been growing crops along Arizona’s waterways for thousands of years.

Because of the confluence of relatively recent water rights settlements and a looming shortage of Colorado River water, tribes like the Tohono O’odham Nation and Gila River Indian Community — which hold the two largest tribal allocations of river water — will have growing influence in the water market, a water rights attorney said.

Eventually tribes will control 46% of the Colorado River water delivered through the state in the Central Arizona Project’s 336-mile canal from Lake Havasu to Tucson.

“They essentially set the price in a shortage,” said Robyn Interpreter, who represents the tiny Pascua Yaqui Tribe in their fight to settle a claim for a share of the river — a lifeline for 40 million people from Wyoming to California.

https://www.courthousenews.com/tribal-influence-over-arizona-water-growing/