Webinars

This year, the US Supreme Court rejected an interstate water rights settlement on the Rio Grande, in Texas v New Mexico, due to the Federal Government’s objection. The decision may suggest an expanded role for the Federal Government in the interpretation and enforcement of interstate water compacts. The proposed Consent Decree would have resolved ten years of interstate litigation among the compacting states over whether New Mexico had violated the Rio Grande Compact. The US argued that approval of the Consent Decree would bar it from pursuing its own breach of compact claims against New Mexico. The 5-4 majority sustained the US objection, rejecting the dissent’s assertion that the majority’s opinion constituted “a serious assault on the power of States to govern, as they always have, the water rights of users in their jurisdictions.”

When the Colorado River states negotiated the 1922 Colorado River Compact, it did not include the tribes along the River, and the Navajo Nation is the largest tribe. In 2023, the Supreme Court held, in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, that Treaty of Bosque Redondo did not require the U.S. Government to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Navajo Nation. Since then, the Navajo Nation and two other tribes negotiated a settlement of their federal reserved water rights with Arizona and the Federal Government. They achieved a settlement less than a year later. The parties hope Congress will approve the $5 billion settlement by the end of the year. This webinar will engage the two primary parties to the settlement on the process and success of the settlement, moderated by Dividing the Waters Founder/Convener John Thorson, who served for many years as the Special Master for Arizona water rights.

After a successful Dividing the Waters conference on the challenges Utah faces at the Great Salt Lake (GSL), this webinar will offer “lessons learned” to the Program’s entire water judge network.  Dividing the Waters Convener Debra Stephens, who did not attend the conference, will interview Anna Stradley from Montana and Bradley Parry from the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation, who spoke at the conference.  Parry will share deeper insights on the challenges and opportunities for his Tribe in independently restoring a wetland on the Tribe’s ancestral – and privately owned – land on the Bear River upstream from Great Salt Lake.

On June 23, 2023, SCOTUS held, in a 5-4 opinion, that although the 1868 treaty between the United States and the Navajo Nation reserved for the Tribe sufficient water to accomplish the purposes of the Navajo Reservation, it did not impose a trust obligation on the United States to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe. U of W Professor Monte Mills will address the rational and implications of the Supreme Court’s decision with respect to both water law and, more broadly, federal Indian law, with questions from Dividing the Waters Founder John Thorson.

On Thursday, October 26, 2023, at 10:00 am Pacific Time, Dividing the Waters, in collaboration with the Environmental Law Institute, will host a ninety-minute webinar that critically examines the Sackett decision, considers the ramifications of the decision, and examines the steps that states and tribes can take to protect wetlands and other waters not covered by the Clean Water Act.

This four-part webinar is offered at no cost, and is open to judges, attorneys and others who are interested. You can attend some of the sessions or all of the sessions, but you only need to register one time.

First Session:  View recording here. Thursday, June 16, 2022, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific time.
Water Development in the Upper Rio Grande Basin; Interstate Conflicts and the Rio Grande Compact; State Supreme Court’s Rejection of 1975 Proposed Groundwater Rules; Litigation over Attempted Export of Groundwater from the Basin; Legislation Directing the Development of a Decision Support System and authorizing groundwater management directed toward insuring sustainability.

Second Session: View recording here. Thursday, July 14, 2022, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific time.
Design, Development and Implementation of a Colorado Rio Grande Decision Support System (“RGDSS) and its Groundwater Model; Demonstration of System

Third Session: View recording here. Thursday, August 18 2022, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific time.
Adoption of 2006 and 2015 Groundwater Rules and Groundwater Management Plans based on RGDSS and its Groundwater Model; Litigation over Objections to Rules and first Groundwater Management Plan.

Fourth Session:  View recording here. Thursday, September 15, 2022, 10:00 am to 12:00 pm Pacific time.
Faculty Roundtable Discussion of Lessons Learned

In 2002, at least 33,000 salmon died in the Lower Klamath River as they attempted to reach their spawning habit, access to which had been blocked for decades by four hydropower dams in the Lower Basin. The fish kill bolstered the efforts of the Native American Tribes of the Lower Basin to remove the dams, which were a major contributor to the derogation of the Klamath’s water quality and the historical erosion of the Tribes’ culture, health and overall well-being. After years of court and administrative proceedings, settlement negotiations, political maneuvering and more negotiations, on June 17 of this year one of the last remaining hurdles to removal of the dams was eliminated. On that date the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the transfer of the hydroelectric license from the long-time operator of the dams to the Klamath River Renewal Corporation and the States of Oregon and California.

Dividing the Waters is conducting two webinars on the Klamath. The first webinar will focus on the impact of federal Indian policy on the Klamath Tribes and the tribes’ efforts to perfect and enforce their water rights in order to protect the culturally important suckers.

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