Number range CHAPTERStatement of

THE HONORABLE JOSEPH MICHAEL CHAVARRIA,

GOVERNOR OF SANTA CLARA PUEBLO and

CHAIRMAN OF THE EIGHT NORTHERN INDIAN PUEBLOS COUNCIL

on S. 2805

THE RIO GRANDE PUEBLOS IRRIGATION INFRASTRUCTURE IMPROVEMENT ACT

submitted to

THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON WATER AND POWER

SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

UNITED STATES SENATE

April 24, 2008

Un Bi Agin Di, Un Sengi Thee': With due and proper respect and good
afternoon. Greetings to all of you in my Tewa language.

Chairman Johnson, Ranking Member Corker, and distinguished members of
the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on
Water and Power, I am pleased to testify in support of S. 2805, the Rio
Grande Pueblos Irrigation Infrastructure Improvement Act.

I would first like to thank Chairman Johnson for scheduling this hearing
and thank the members of the Committee for attending today to learn more
about the critical irrigation infrastructure needs of the Indian Pueblos
in New Mexico. I also want to thank our Senator, Jeff Bingaman, who is,
of course, the Chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee,
for introducing this important bill and to commend Senator Domenici and
the rest of our delegation in New Mexico for the great support they have
shown for the Pueblos over the years.

The Honorable Joe A. Garcia, who serves not only as the President of the
National Congress of American Indians but is also the Chairman of the
All Indian Pueblo Council in New Mexico, wanted to testify about the
importance of this bill to all of the Pueblos in the Rio Grande drainage
basin but he was unable to do so today. He asked me to convey his best
wishes and the concerns of the Pueblos for him.

My name is Joseph Michael Chavarria. I am Governor of Santa Clara
Pueblo. We are located approximately 25 miles to the northwest of the
City of Santa Fe in the Land of Enchantment in the Great State of New
Mexico. My people are blessed to live along the mainstem of the Rio
Grande. Santa Clara Pueblo also receives its water from two tributaries
that feed into the Rio Grande, the Santa Clara Creek and the Santa Cruz
River. As Governor of Santa Clara, I represent 1/19th of the All Indian
Pueblo Council in New Mexico. However, I am here today in my capacity as
the Chairman of the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council. In 1961, the
Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council was established as a collaborative
effort of the Pueblos of Ohkay Owingeh, Nambe, Picuris, Pojoaque, San
Ildefonso, Santa Clara, Taos, and Tesuque. Since then, the Council's
monthly meetings have become an ongoing forum where Pueblo leaders from
the Northern Pueblos discuss common issues.

In my capacity as the Chairman for the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos
Council, I will try to speak generally for all the Pueblos that can
benefit from enactment of this legislation and I hope I do justice for
both the Northern Pueblos and the Southern Pueblos. I must note there
are some distinctive twists on the irrigation infrastructure issues for
those six Southern Pueblos, Cochiti, Santo Domingo, San Felipe, Santa
Ana, Sandia, and Isleta, that are part of the Middle Rio Grande
Conservancy District and have to interact with the Conservancy District,
which the legislation recognizes. However, the basic need for
rehabilitation of our existing deteriorating irrigation infrastructure
is similar for all of the Pueblos, from Taos Pueblo all the way south to
Isleta Pueblo, and it is that issue I will address today. If I use
examples from Santa Clara Pueblo to illustrate the problem, it is simply
because I am the most familiar with my home, but similar problems exist
throughout all of the Pueblos. This bill is vitally important to the
health, welfare, and cultural survival of the Pueblos in the Rio Grande
drainage basin.

There are actually nineteen Indian Pueblos in New Mexico, but there are
eighteen Pueblos which farm in the Rio Grande drainage basin and are
therefore included in this bill. The drainage basin includes the Rio
Grande and all of the tributaries that feed into the Rio Grande. Since
time immemorial, all of the so-called Rio Grande Pueblos have utilized
irrigation structures to irrigate the many thousands of agricultural
acres within our aboriginal and current landholdings. Our ancestors at
Santa Clara Pueblo first used farming techniques that others refer to as
dry-land farming when our ancestors lived in the mesa tops before they
moved closer to the rivers (in the 1300s, long before the Europeans
arrived) but we have always had to grow certain crops that are necessary
for our religious practices. The culture and traditional way of life of
all of the Pueblos is linked to the water and to the growing of certain
crops to share within our community and that we use in various practices
throughout the year. Agriculture has played a significant role by
providing the sustenance needed to survive and continues to be an
integral component of our traditional and cultural activities within our
communities. Today, because of the importance of our traditional way of
life, the Pueblo communities continue to farm our lands even though our
irrigation systems have fallen into disrepair due to age, deterioration,
and lack of adequate funds to ensure proper maintenance. We know there
are over 900 miles of ditches belonging to the 18 Rio Grande Pueblos.

The level of disrepair is shocking. At Santa Clara Pueblo, we have a
pull gate to divert water off of our main irrigation conveyance system
that is so deteriorated that we have to cover up the gate opening with
sand bags so that the water is not wasted. It is not rare to find
diversion structures and conveyance ditches that are unsafe or barely
operable on all of the Pueblos. Some of the Pueblos have diversion
structures made only of rock and brush or bermed-up materials that wash
out during thunderstorms every single year. Those of us with concrete
ditches are not in better shape, however. At many of the Pueblos, our
concrete ditches are so deteriorated and structurally deficient that
they no longer divert water efficiently or dependably. In fact, at Santa
Clara Pueblo and for many of the Pueblos along the mainstem Rio Grande,
the turnouts that we have to divert water onto our fields are now far
above the actual water flow because of the way the river has incised
over the years. Because of the poor state of our systems, we and other
Pueblos often find that our fields that we've used for many generations
now end up being either too high or too low so that some historic fields
are too easily flooded and others cannot get water at all.

This is very upsetting to the Pueblos on many fronts. At many Pueblos,
we simply cannot get the water conveyed onto those historic fields
reliably or efficiently anymore because of the sad state of our
irrigation system, not because we don't need or want to use those
fields. It is also upsetting to us when it takes too much water to get
the job done. Water supplies are very limited in New Mexico. What is a
"creek" here in Washington D.C. would be a mighty river in New Mexico.
Pueblo people understand the importance of water conservation. You will
not see lush green lawns at the homes of Pueblo people. Water is
precious to the Pueblos and, culturally, as native people, we hold water
to the highest degree of reverence. It is holy to us.

The poor condition of the Pueblo irrigation facilities is not the result
of lack of care or interest on the part of the Pueblo users. Pueblo
people have traditional cleaning of their ditches every year. This is a
very important activity for the Pueblos. The deterioration of our
infrastructure has resulted from a lack of adequate funding through the
Bureau of Indian Affairs to ensure adequate irrigation operation and
maintenance.

The Pueblos actually brought this up as a key issue with Secretary Bruce
Babbitt during a national consultation with tribes regarding Indian
water rights in the late 1990s. In 1998, Secretary Babbitt directed that
an assessment be made of the status of those irrigation water systems
along the Rio Grande and its tributaries that are used by eighteen of
the Indian Pueblos in New Mexico. That assessment was completed by the
Commissioner of Reclamation and the Assistant Secretary for Indian
Affairs in 2000 and confirms the problems I've described here.

Has BIA funding improved since that study was issued in 2000? No, it has
actually gotten worse. Except for situations involving pre-existing
contractual obligations or existing Congressional mandates, there has
been no Bureau of Indian Affairs dollars for irrigation operation and
maintenance at all since 2000. Occasionally, BIA could reprogram a few
dollars here and there but it has been done in a shoestring approach,
unreliable and unknown from year to year, which does not allow for any
real planning or methodical rehabilitation work. The Pueblos have done
what we could with Tribal funds to deal with emergencies and to search
out limited funds from other agencies but that has resulted in a
band-aid approach at best.

Again, I can offer an example from Santa Clara Pueblo to illustrate the
point. Our Pueblo is one of the few self-governance compacting Tribes in
New Mexico and we remain one of the few self-governance Tribes in the
nation. Self-governance means we assume responsibility for carrying out
various programs instead of the BIA, such as irrigation, but based only
upon our share of BIA funding allocated to assist the Tribes in our
area. As a self-governance compacting Tribe, Santa Clara Pueblo does not
have access to more resources than do other Tribes or Pueblos; we only
take responsibility for our share of the funding that is appropriated to
the BIA. Thus, we have actually searched the BIA budget for funding for
our irrigation system for a long time, but our search has largely
produced no results.

In fact, BIA funding for irrigation systems has always been minimal and
is only getting worse over time. The Irrigation Maintenance line item in
the BIA budget for our region and our agency has been zero dollars (\$0)
every year since we first looked at this budget item in 1995 and remains
zero dollars continuing through today. So, in an attempt to do emergency
repairs for our irrigation system, Santa Clara Pueblo has taken
responsibility since 2002 for our share of the BIA's Irrigation
Engineering/Supervision program line item. However, that irrigation line
item is also dwindling over time. 2002 marked our high point when we
received approximately \$9,600 of year-end money. After that, for four
years, from 2003 to 2006, we received approximately \$8,000 per year
through our self-governance compacting process but then the funds fell
to an all-time low of just \$547 in 2007. In 2008, BIA operation and
maintenance funding for irrigation was again zero dollars so our portion
was zero also, and our portion of the BIA's Irrigation/Engineering
program line item rose to the paltry sum of \$858. There are 45 miles of
ditches within Santa Clara Pueblo. Think about that: \$858 to address
long-standing rehabilitation needs for 45 miles of ditches within my
Pueblo. We have done what we can to reallocate funding within our
compact process to allow for emergency repairs and maintenance of our
irrigation system but you can imagine just how little we can do with the
kind of funding that has been available.

That is why S. 2805 is so important to the Rio Grande Pueblos. It will
direct the Secretary of the Interior, through the Bureau of Reclamation,
to work with the 18 Pueblos to assess Pueblo irrigation infrastructure
within a set timeline and then authorizes the provision of grants or
cooperative agreements to the Pueblos to repair, rehabilitate, or
reconstruct existing deteriorated irrigation infrastructure.
Participation by any of the affected Pueblos is optional. For those
Pueblos that want to participate, this legislation provides a means for
the Bureau of Reclamation to work with the Pueblos to look
comprehensively at the problems, establish priorities for actual
projects within a set timeline, and provide the necessary authorization
of funding (a total of \$10 million dollars, with part allocated to the
study and the rest allocated to actual projects) so that appropriations
can be sought to finally get the job done. It also provides mechanisms
to allow for partnering with other federal or state agencies to maximize
limited dollars. While there is a cost-share element to the bill, which
is unfortunate given the Department of Interior's trust responsibility,
I am pleased to see that in-kind services of the Pueblos can be
recognized as cost-share and there is an ability to waive the cost-share
requirement if any of the Pueblos has financial hardship. We hope the
assessment portion of this process will not take too long since some
initial work was already done for the 2000 report but we are encouraged
by the fact that bill specifies timelines for completion. This work is
long overdue.

There are many benefits that can be achieved by enacting this bill into
law, including improved safety, increased water use efficiency and
agricultural productivity as well as the preservation of the culture for
the Pueblos and the opportunity for our community to continue an
important way of life which we have maintained for many generations. The
Pueblos understand that we have many neighbors now on the river and that
all have to do their part for better water management. Neglecting this
problem or postponing the issues for another day will only result in
further deterioration, increasing the cost of rehabilitation at a later
date.

We thank Senator Bingaman for introducing this bill. This is an issue
that has long been supported by the All Indian Pueblo Council. I am
including with this testimony a copy of a resolution of the All Indian
Pueblo Council from the year 2000 in which the All Indian Pueblo Council
urged our Congressional delegation to support the authorization and
funding of a rehabilitation program to repair the irrigation systems of
the Pueblos of New Mexico. Chairman and members of the Committee, it is
an honor to testify before you on this important legislation which will
benefit the Pueblos located along the Rio Grande and its tributaries in
New Mexico.

Ku' Da' Wo' Haa': Thank you very much. We ask for your support for this
important legislation.