Tribe Seeks to Sell Part of Colorado River Share, Opposes MWD Stance

HAVASU LAKE, Calif. â€”  As part of the Southern California water war now raging, the fight involving the Chemehuevi tribe is only a side skirmish.

Compared to the enormous stakes for San Diego County, the Imperial Valley and the mighty Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the amount of water and money the Chemehuevis are fighting for is quite modest.

But for the impoverished Native American tribe living marginally on a hilly, sandy, rock-strewn reservation beside the Colorado River, the outcome could mean the difference between economic recovery and continued stagnation.

“We have so many things we want to do for our people, so many dreams we want to see come true,� said N. Levi Esquerra, 29, a sociology graduate of Brigham Young University who moved to the reservation two years ago and quickly became tribal chairman. “Everything starts with the water.�

The Chemehuevis are one of two California tribes--the other is the Quechans in southeast Imperial County--who see water sales as an economic lifeline, a way to escape dependence on the Bureau of Indian Affairs, gambling and the vagaries of desert agriculture.

Both would like to sell some of their annual shares of Colorado River water--allocations guaranteed to them, as sovereign nations, by various laws and treaties.

The Chemehuevis want to use water revenues as collateral to secure bank loans for constructing facilities to lure recreation-minded tourists and snowbirds: restaurants, time-share condominiums, a golf course, maybe a tribal cultural center. Those are the kinds of attractions that have turned Lake Havasu City on the Arizona side of the Colorado River into a boom town.

The tribe already owns some modest resort facilities but they have not proved to be a major moneymaker.

“Until we have paper [a water sales contract] in hand and money in the bank, none of this means anything,� said tribal Vice Chairman David Chavez. “It’s very frustrating.�

For the present, the tribe cannot afford its annual holiday giveaway. On the door outside the tribal administration center is a notice: “Sorry. There Will Not Be a Turkey Distribution This Year Due to a Shortage of Funds.�

Recent years have been rough for the Chemehuevis, who have lived for centuries in the mountains and canyons of the Mojave Desert and along the banks of the Colorado.

Business deals involving the tribe’s boat marina went sour. Crops failed from the ravages of heat (summer temperatures up to 125 degrees) and wild burros. Rent disputes erupted with non-Indian tenants on the reservation.

A former tribal chairman was charged with 29 felony counts of embezzling tribal funds (her case went to the jury Wednesday in Los Angeles). A 100-year flood wiped out portions of the airstrip’s runway, meant to attract private pilots.

Wrangling With the MWD

Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt dashed the Chemehuevis’ hopes of selling their water to Nevada. Such interstate sales would just invite decades of litigation and political wrangling among water-jealous Western states, he reasoned.

The Chemehuevis have a small gambling center, but it is difficult to compete with the lure of the full-tilt casinos and big-name entertainment at Laughlin, Nev., just an hour or so upriver.

The tribal budget has dropped by two-thirds in three years.

Now the tribe would like to sell about 5,000 acre-feet of water a year to an unnamed California agency--Esquerra declines to be specific. If the Chemehuevis could sell the resource at, say, $200 an acre-foot, that could mean $1 million a year.

That is small potatoes compared to the hundreds of millions involved in the prospective deal between the San Diego County Water Authority and the Imperial Irrigation District. But to the Chemehuevis, it could be leveraged into development loans.

The rub is that water sold by the tribe would have to be delivered to the buyer via the 242-mile Colorado Aqueduct, which starts just a few miles from the reservation and is owned and operated by the Metropolitan Water District.

The MWD is locked in litigation with the San Diego and Imperial agencies over how much the MWD should be allowed to charge to transport water through the aqueduct for deals like the one being put together by the two groups.

The San Diego authority would like to buy 200,000 acre-feet (enough for 400,000 families for a year) from the Imperial County district, which draws 3.3 million acre-feet annually from the Colorado River. The sale, if consummated, could influence state and even federal policy on the hot issue of agency-to-agency water sales.

San Diego says that the MWD is demanding an excessive charge for transporting the water--called a wheeling rate--and that the regional agency is trying to make such deals as its proposal with the Imperial district economically impossible. San Diego snarls that the MWD is trying to maintain its water monopoly.

The Chemehuevis and Quechans agree with San Diego and say that if the MWD prevails in the wheeling rate lawsuit, the tribes will not be able to find buyers willing to pay both the wheeling rate and a fair-market price for the water.

A History of Woes

To the Chemehuevis, this is particularly galling given their history with the MWD, which acts as water wholesaler to 16 million Southern Californians in six counties.

The Chemehuevis were ousted in the 1930s from 8,000 acres of their traditional lands to make way for the Parker Dam project and creation of Lake Havasu, essential components for the MWD’s system of bringing water from the Colorado to the Southland. Chemehuevi homes and graves are at the bottom of the lake.

Further, because the tribe uses only a portion of its annual allocation of the river’s water, the bulk of its share is declared “surplus� each year by the Department of Interior and is available to agencies such as the MWD, with no compensation to the tribe.

Lester J. Marston, the Chemehuevis’ attorney, argues bitterly that the ironies of history have given the tribe an invaluable asset that flows past its reservation--an annual allocation of 11,340 acre-feet--but left it with no way to capitalize on it.

“They [the MWD] are going to price the tribe’s water out of the market,� Marston told San Francisco Superior Court Judge Laurence D. Kay, who is hearing the wheeling-rate case. “The Chemehuevis will remain dirt poor, and that’s all we’ll have: dirt, with water we can’t sell.�

As a matter of law, Kay must decide whether the MWD’s proposed wheeling rate of $262 per acre-foot conforms with the “reasonable manner� formula in legislation meant to encourage water deals to make California less wasteful with the resource.

If the Chemehuevis and Quechans are thinking primarily of their own backyards, the MWD is thinking on a grander scale: of its whole delivery system for Southern California and of ensuring water reliability and affordability for an entire region.

The MWD stoutly argues that anything less than full-cost recovery for wheeling water imperils the regional approach that has served well for decades and would require shifting of costs to other users.

MWD’s position is that San Diego County, by demanding a much lower wheeling rate, is looking to dump some of its fair share of the MWD’s overhead costs--including the building and maintaining of the entire system of aqueducts, pipelines and reservoirs--onto other members.

The agency argues that the San Diego authority is like the selfish homeowner who wants to pay only for the cop who patrols his street, not for the entire police department.

After a hearing Nov. 7--at which Kay appeared dubious about a crucial portion of the MWD’s argument--the MWD and San Diego jointly announced the resumption of long-stalled negotiations aimed at reaching an out-of-court settlement.

Trying to Reach a Settlement

Negotiators for both sides are set to meet Friday and Saturday with David Kennedy, director of the state Department of Water Resources, to see if a deal is possible. Kay had asked that lawyers for all parties provide him with additional written arguments by Dec. 15.

A settlement could pave the way for the Imperial Valley-San Diego deal--and influence other major water matters such as the San Francisco/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta project and the state’s bid to convince the federal government that California is learning to use its water more efficiently and thus should not be punished by having its share of the Colorado River reduced.

But a settlement involving San Diego would not affect the Chemehuevis, Quechans and other potential water sellers who need to use the Colorado Aqueduct. Even if a settlement is reached, the MWD would probably continue the lawsuit, seeking clarification on how much it can charge others who want to use the aqueduct. Kay’s decision on that issue could be crucial to the Chemehuevis and others.

On the Chemehuevi reservation, tribe members have given Esquerra and other leaders the authority to sign an agreement of up to 25 years for the sale of water, as long as the tribe retains the right to the water after the deal lapses. About 150 tribe members live on the reservation, and 500 are scattered throughout the rest of the Southwest.

With just minimal farming underway, the tribe uses only about 1,000 acre-feet of water over its mostly uninhabited 32,000 acres in this High Desert area of San Bernardino County. For several years, the tribe used Colorado River water for drinking, but the costs of purification proved too high.

With federal funds, wells were dug and water lines laid, but some tribe members are still unable to pay their water bills. In exchange, they are required to do chores around the reservation.

Into this backdrop the tribe, whose name means “those who play with fish,� looks to the Colorado for a way out of its economic straits. The prospective water sale is a major topic of discussion.

“I just keep hoping and praying it’ll come about,� said Margaret Chavez, 84, the second-oldest Chemehuevi on the reservation. “We need something to help us keep on going.�