Along the bustling Interstate 10, west of Sacaton, rows of new plastic neon blue irrigation pipes will soon be flowing with hope through the Gila River Indian Community. The tribe got $63.8 million to fund the Gila River Farms Efficiency Project through the Inflation Reduction Act.
They’ll be replacing 140,000 feet of original, concrete pipeline.
“That’s about 27 miles, give or take,” said Dave DeJong, director of the Pima-Maricopa Irrigation Project. “Gila River Farms will be more efficiently able to irrigate the land and increase irrigation efficiencies from the high 60% to hopefully in the 80% level.”
When all is said and done, with construction scheduled to be finished by spring of 2026, he estimates that total water savings should tally 4,220 acre-feet annually. It’ll amount to 42,200 acre-feet in conserved water over the next decade across the 12,000-acre tribally owned community farm.
For over a millenia, Pima and Pee-Posh peoples, who make up members of the Gila River Indian Community, have grown crops throughout the Valley. They trace their roots to the Hohokam, whose ancient canals paved the way for modern-day Phoenix.
“Here we are,” said Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis of the Gila River Indian Community. “We’re using cutting-edge technology to address our current needs here, and honoring our past as we are building a bright future. That was our first business, that was what kept our community growing.”
Last week, the Bureau of Reclamation inked three historic water conservation agreements in Santa Fe with his tribe, which thinks it can step up to help take some strain off Lake Mead and stabilize the Colorado River Basin. Both the Gila River Farms Efficiency and Blackwater Lateral Lining projects have broken ground.
There’s also a $17 million project to construct a regulating reservoir to capture spilled flows from the Santan Canal. It’s supposed to begin next month and be completed by the end of 2025, leading to 1,300 acre-feet in annual savings. All together, they’re valued at $107 million and reportedly the first long-term pacts to be signed by any user.
“And today, less than a week later,” Lewis said on Tuesday, “we’re breaking ground on the first and most significant of those three projects.”
Gila River District 4 Councilwoman Jennifer Allison sees this as an investment in the tribe’s youth — the next generation of farmers and engineers — solving the water crisis on tribal lands. Despite the Southwest megadrought — the driest period in 1,200 years — Allison explained they aren’t discouraged.
“Climate change is a big factor in everything,” she said. “Here it is October, and it’s still 100-something degrees right now, which is not funny, but funny in a way that we all need to wake up and start our plans as to how we are going to conserve water.”
Lewis agreed.
“Projects like this give our younger generation hope that they can be an agriculturist, they can farm their land as well,” he explained, “that we’re going to have built-in efficiencies, so there is water on reservation for on-reservation use.”
At the same time, some of the tribe’s main agricultural exports are water-intensive crops: alfalfa and cotton. Lewis acknowledges the optics of growing them in drought-stricken Arizona, but he also wants to transform fallow land into flourishing fields.
“Every molecule, you know, every drop we don’t want to waste. That’s part of our culture and tradition, and this is an opportunity, modernizing our farms, to look beyond industrial crops,” Lewis said. “And so for us, this is an opportunity, really, with our farms to be the breadbasket again, and we want to grab that opportunity.”
Ahead of the Post-2026 Guidelines going into effect for Lake Powell and Lake Mead, Arizona, California and Nevada pledged last year to conserve 3 million acre-feet until 2026, with the U.S. government agreeing to pay $521 for every acre-foot of water that irrigation districts, cities and tribes don’t use.
But with these new deals, funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, the feds are willing to pay a premium — nearly triple that amount – enticing the tribe away from tapping into the Colorado River.
Especially for agriculture, since up to 80% of the Colorado River is used for that industry; this same source irrigates some 5.5 million acres of farmland in the West.
Now, more than 40 million residents living in the U.S. and Mexico depend on the Colorado River for food, water and energy, including 30 federally recognized tribes, who lay claim to a fourth of its supply.
“I think the investment in the infrastructure will ultimately make the system more resilient for the community,” said Cora Tso, a senior research fellow at Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy. “The ag industry uses a significant amount of water, and thinking about making that system more sustainable would ultimately benefit the state.”
And not only for Arizona, but across the rest of the Colorado River Basin, according to Reclamation Deputy Commissioner David Palumbo.
“Thank you to the community for stepping up and being a model for such great conservation,” Palumbo said at Tuesday’s ceremony, applauding the tribe. “That water will stay in Lake Mead. It will shore up elevations. It will prevent future shortages. Our success in reclamation is really rooted in our relationships with people like you.”
There’s a trade-off though.
“The three agreements that we’re celebrating over the next couple days, first here at Gila River Farms, represents $107 million coming to the community,” said Palumbo, adding that the tribe has agreed to leave 73,000 acre-feet of CAP entitlement in Lake Mead over the next decade, with help from the Biden administration.
The Inflation Reduction Act has disbursed more than $720 million to Indian Country, and the Gila River Indian Community racked up approximately 15% of that funding among these three projects alone.
Home to more than 12,000 residents spanning across a landmass larger than the city of Phoenix, the Gila River Indian Community has been allotted more than 653,000 acre-feet annually.
When it comes to conserving water, this Valley-based tribe has been leading the way, especially since 2022, after taking a 750,000 acre-foot cut over three years. Palumbo credited Lewis and the Gila River Indian Community for “leveraging that funding to create resiliency projects out here on the ground.”
Fifteen miles east of Tuesday’s groundbreaking, the tribe began another $25.7 million dollar project the very next day to line 16 miles of earthen canals with concrete in the Blackwater District near Coolidge.
“This is in the shadows, literally, of who we are … just not too far from here, we have the Casa Grande Ruins,” Lewis said on Wednesday. “I’m confident. In fact, I’m proud thinking of our Huhugam [and] how proud they would be [of] what we’re accomplishing today.”
It’s called the Blackwater Lateral Lining Project. He described it as the “rehabilitation of our dilapidated canals,” which lose up to 40% of the water they carry. But they could save more than 1,300 acre-feet annually with the proper improvements.
Although that hasn’t even begun yet, new enterprises are already spurring.
DeJong shared that 1,100 acres of tribal farmland, in this area, are now in production, but ahead of this project, another 500 acres have come online within the last four months. He anticipates an additional 300 acres too, by no later than 2026.
“No one agency or no one community can do this by themselves. You have to have great partnerships,” said Terry Cosby, chief of U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, which is jointly funding this project.
He’s impressed with Gila River’s eagerness to get started right away.
“It’s a once-in-a-generational opportunity for us to help people, help communities, and just do good work,” Cosby said. “I can’t tell you how aggressive you are. One day something is signed and it’s done, the next day, where’s my money? Where’s my check? We like working with folks like that.”
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