Such acculturated Indians continue to seek progress, specifically to pull the Indians out of the doldrums of having the lowest per-capita income of any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S. As Denver Post writers Patrick O'Driscoll and Jim Carrier summarized, [T]ribes are beating non-Indians to the punch by developing resources on their own, moving into marketplaces big and small, renegotiating leases that once practically stole their resources and defending their claims in court. Tribal intentions to control their resources are noteworthy considering that six percent of the nations oil and gas and 30 percent of its strippable coal lies in reservations.

The move for tribal control of resources aims to increase employment on the reservation and let tribes control their land base, said David Lester, executive director of the Council of Energy Resource Tribes (CERT) in Denver. He told the Christian Science Monitor that As Indian nations, these tribes should be making the decision about how and when their resources are developed. He added that the tribes survival depends in part on a stable, diversified economic base. This need aided the establishment of CERT in 1975. The council, which now has 57 member tribes, also has an education program for Indians that offers internships, scholarships, and TRIBES (Tribal Resource Institution in Business, Engineering, and Science) for high school graduates the summer before they go to college. TRIBES helps educate Indians to forward the councils overall goal of using tribal resources to develop viable economies without sacrificing values. We have to develop tribal people with technical and professional skills so we can eliminate our technical dependence on others, Lester said.

Indian entrepreneurship has become a burgeoning national trend. As Carrier and ODriscoll write, From mining to ski resorts and casino gambling to nuclear waste, development is passing increasingly to tribal hands. The trend began with the Florida Seminoles in 1979, and by the early 1980s, high-stakes Bingo involved over 100 reservations and was one of the hottest issues on Indian reservations across the country. Bingo was trumpeted as, an economic godsend for tribes with limited resources, minimal capital, and high unemployment. Because of the reservations unique status as sovereign nations within the nation, state prohibitions and regulations on Bingo do not apply on Indian land, and reservation Bingo income cannot be taxed. The New York Times eventually dubbed it, the largest legal but unregulated and unaudited cash business in the country.

Examples of this entrepreneurial trend abound. Wisconsins Oneida Indians, for instance, purchased Bingo and slot machines and raised their budget from $5 million 10 years ago to $85 million today. The Cherokee Indians of Oklahoma similarly profited from several enterprises that helped them go from bankruptcy in 1970 to a $70 million budget. Also, the Navajo tribe is building a high-powered electrical line to connect the Four Corners region with cities in central and southwest Arizona.

Closer to home, although they are one of the smallest Indian nations in the country, Colorados Southern Ute tribe is also one of the most entrepreneurial. In August of 1994, the tribe completed an $87 million deal to get and operate a pipeline and gas-processing facility, which allows the tribe to upgrade gas production and processing. Also, Red Willow Production Company, the tribe's energy company, has 35 billion cubic feet of gas reserves, and operates or has interests in 169 gas wells on the reservation. Through Red Willow out of Ignacio, Colorado, the tribe bought Conoco's interest in 51 producing gas wells in LaPlata and Archuleta counties in a deal that was thought to be the first where a tribe served as a well operator. With majority interest, the tribe began operating 21 of the wells. The purchase covered net reserves estimated at 5.3 bcf of gas and will mark the start of field operations by the tribe. The deal was the first in a series of such transactions planned to build the company into an active operator.

The Animas-La Plata project was first authorized by the Colorado River Basin Project Act of 1968 as a participating project under the Colorado River Storage Act of 1956. The proposed dam was designed to store and deliver agricultural, municipal and industrial water to Indians and non-Indians in southwestern Colorado and northwestern New Mexico. Construction has been effectively blocked by environmental and other concerns, and a quadrupling of the original estimated cost. The Animas River drains a part of the Rockies in southwest Colorado, feeds into the San Juan River in northwest New Mexico and joins the Colorado River in Utah. It also passes through Glen Canyon, Hoover and other dams on its way across Arizona, past Los Angeles pipelines and into Mexico's Gulf of California.

The proposed Animas River dam, in Montezuma County of southwest Colorado and San Juan county of New Mexico, would consist of three dams, two reservoirs (Ridges Basin Reservoir and the Southern Ute Reservoir), 240 miles of pipelines and canals, seven water pumping stations, and 34 miles of electric transmission lines . It would provide 195,400 acre-feet of water for municipal and industrial uses and water for agricultural purposes -- mostly irrigation.

The proposed dam built to full size would also divert and pump water from the Animas River to be stored in Ridges Basin Reservoir; divert water from the La Plata River to be stored in the Southern Ute Reservoir; and pump water through Dry Side Canal to be used for irrigation in Colorado. Irrigation water for New Mexico would be pumped through the New Mexico Irrigation canal from the Southern Ute Reservoir through a lateral pumping system. Durango would get water from the Ridges Basin Reservoir from a Durango pumping plant via two pipe lines. Animas-La Plata would also pump water year-round from the Animas River up 1,000 vertical feet into the La Plata River drainage to irrigate farms at an average elevation of 6,800 feet to grow surplus crops. In all, the dam would give the tribes storage rights to 26,000 acre-feet of municipal and industrial water each year in the proposed Ridges Basin Reservoir, and a few thousand acre-feet of irrigation water. One acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons -- the volume of water that covers one acre to a depth of one foot.

A further environmental concern for dam opposers is the project's possible affects on salt concentrations on land and in the water. The Grand Valley already has high levels of natural salts. By irrigating that land with unnatural amounts of water, Grand Valley farmers add 580,000 tons of salt pollution per year to the Colorado River, federal records show. Therefore, the BOR is spending $265 million to build concrete liners for Grand Valley irrigation canals to block some water from seeping into the salty soils. This measure should cut salt concentrations in the Colorado River by 7.2 parts per million to 21.7 ppm, according to a BOR report.

Animas-La Plata, however, would irrigate other salty soils and block the clean river water that dilutes the Grand Valley's salt pollution. The project would also increase salt concentrations in the Colorado River by six ppm to 27.6 ppm, according to the BOR. Damming the rivers, therefore, would create enough Colorado River salt pollution to negate all the clean-up gains of the $265 million tax dollars sunk into the Grand Valley desalineation project. Furthermore, a BOR report found that Colorado River salt pollution from all sources causes $311 million in economic damage each year to western water users. These environmental concerns prompted the Friends of the Earth and the National Taxpayers' Union to include the A-LP in its Green Scissors Report asking Congress to cut wasteful government spending that harms the environment.

Dam opposers offer several alternatives to the project that they believe would satisfy water needs without environmental degradation and without Animas-La Plata. Southern Ute Grassroots Committee members listed several ideas in a February letter to BOR Commissioner Dan Beard. These ideas included some combination of:

• offering financial and technical assistance to rehabilitate reservation ground water and existing surface water resources; possibly using clean aquifers under tribal lands for water storage

• allowing tribes to develop new and existing direct flow rights on the San Juan, Piedra, Florida and Animas rivers

• funding development of smaller reservoirs or enlargement of existing reservoirs, such as Lemon and Vallecito for storing tribal water

• funding exploration of coal development technologies that would not require the project

• allowing the tribe to establish a water marketing business by leasing water that the BOR has in existing Federal reservoirs such as Navajo and Glen Canyon to state and/or federal government for stream flows to protect endangered fish and lease same water again to downstream communities like Farmington, Las Vegas or Southern California (Committee Letter to Beard).

To promote efficiency, the government will spend $10 million on water conservation experiments in Western cities such as Denver. In the past, water conservation plans required by the government "have been empty paper exercises," Beard said. "They have been sitting on the shelf gathering dust."

Ultimately, in the federal view, water will flow from the agricultural sector to municipal and industrial sectors.

"The single most important thing we can do is to encourage delivery of water at a higher price," Beard said. "There is an economic point where a farmer says, "Well, maybe it makes sense for me to transfer my water over.' ... People don't like that on your Western Slope. But on the other hand, communities over here want to maintain their growth."

Since 1902, the U.S. government has built more than 250 dams and 16,000 miles of irrigation canals to promote settlement of the West. Now the mission has changed, particularly under the Clinton administration. Water supply workers at the Bureau of Reclamation's Denver office are disappearing.

One water project expected to continue is the Animas-La Plata in southwestern Colorado. Congress first approved it in 1968. A big part of this would be a reservoir to hold water for farmers, as well as the Southern Ute and Ute Mountain Ute tribes. Citizens delayed construction by raising environmental concerns, such as the possibility that less water downstream in the San Juan River could kill endangered squawfish.

A federal audit this year concluded that costs of the project outweighed benefits. A March 14 audit report, sent to Beard, recommended dumping part of the project and asking the tribes if they'd be willing to scrap irrigation improvements in return for cash or the chance to sell water rights to downstream buyers.

Beard said: "Animas-La Plata is not being built because it is financially feasible. It is being built because it is part of a comprehensive Indian water rights settlement."

The audit found that, "strictly in a narrow sense, it wasn't a good investment. But when you put it in the context of an overall settlement, and say, "We're going to settle all these Indian legal problems, and lift the cloud that surrounds water rights and future water use in southwestern Colorado,' it did make sense."

Ideally, free-market economics would govern who gets more water and who doesn't, Beard said. But the situation is complicated, because states allocate and control water resources. Building dams is the issue and, Beard said yesterday, "times have changed."

The Bureau of Reclamation (BuRec) was established in 1902 to administer the construction and maintenance of large water projects (water storage and delivery and hydroelectric power generation). Between the 1920s and the early 1980s, large water projects popped up throughout the West, fueling urban development, agricultural expansion, the greening of barren lands and the creation of man-made lakes for water recreation through a series of dams, culverts, and canals. These projects often received substantial backing from the federal government as well as from potential beneficiaries of the projects. The water flowing from these projects was sold for pennies of it's worth in the parched West.

The Animas-La Plata Project is touted as the granddaddy of all water projects, costing more than $463 million for Phase I and $154 million for Phase II. The Project consists of a combination of dams, canals and pipelines which will pump 195,000 acre-feet of water 500 feet above the Animas River to the Ridges Basin Reservoir, carry the water another 400 feet over the ridgeline and pressurize the water for delivery to the four corners area for agriculture, subdivisions and other development. An additional set of pipes and pumps will carry water to Durango from the Reservoir and a second reservoir and pumping station on the lower La Plata River will help the Southern Utes develop their coal reserves.