A view of Black Mesa at San Ildefonso Pueblo in New Mexico. Photo by Em-jay-es via Wikipedia
Non-Indians in northern New Mexico face a September 2017 deadline to join a major Pueblo water rights settlement. But so far few residents are willing to give up their private wells and hook into a regional water pipeline that's a major component of the settlement. According to The Santa Fe Reporter, only 120 people have agreed to join the system, far fewer than the 1,500 needed by Santa Fe County before a key September 2017 deadline. Wait a minute,” resident Nancy Carson told the paper. "They’re going to tap my well, take water from the Rio Grande, chlorinate it, then sell it back to me, when I already get my water for free just a few feet away?” The county itself has set up its own roadblock. Due to a trespassing dispute with San Ildefonso Pueblo, one of the tribes in the settlement, officials are withholding their contribution of the water system -- about $23 million. The entire project is expected to cost about $245 million, according to the Reporter. "It shows their inability to act in good faith," Pueblo Gov. James Mountain told the paper. "I don’t know what the county’s line of thinking is, but I do know that the settlement agreement is a separate matter versus the trespass matter, and the county appears to have intertwined the two, which is very inappropriate." The Bureau of Indian Affairs has accused the county of trespassing by failing to secure rights-of-way for several roads used by non-Indians who live within the exterior boundaries of the reservation. Negotiations have failed to produce anything solid since a December 2013 letter. Get the Story:
Right This Way (The Santa Fe Reporter 11/18)
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