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Rewriting the Rules
The city of Albuquerque exists in part because of a massive infrastructure project: the Azotea Tunnel. In the 1960s, the federal government dammed up tributaries in Southern Colorado and tunneled beneath miles of rugged mountains and high desert, effectively rerouting part of the Colorado River into the Rio Grande. The project helped sustain Albuquerque’s rapid population growth. Today, 70 percent of the city’s drinking water comes from the Colorado River. Meanwhile, communities downstream of those Colorado tributaries lost out. Water that would have flowed through the Jicarilla Apache Nation was instead diverted via the tunnel. The tribe wasn’t consulted or compensated. It took decades, but the tribe eventually secured 40,000 acre feet of water through a settlement with the federal government. Water it can now lease to cities and private industry and set aside for conservation. In this episode, Marketplace Indigenous Affairs reporter Savannah Maher travels 180 miles north of Albuquerque to the Jicarilla Apache Nation to talk to Daryl Vigil, retired longtime water administrator, about how the tribe is fighting for a seat at the table in ongoing Colorado River management. And we visit To’Hajiilee, a community dealing with water insecurity that stands to benefit from leasing Jicarilla settlement water.
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