Luján blasts zero funding for Navajo-Gallup water project
A zero-dollar federal line item could delay final Navajo-Gallup hookups and leave households waiting longer for a steady water supply across Gallup and nearby Navajo communities.
A $0 federal allocation for the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project would push the final stretch of the pipeline farther out of reach for households across Gallup and the Navajo Nation, delaying hookups for homes still waiting on service and prolonging the uncertainty that has shadowed the project for years.
U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján blasted the Trump administration’s budget proposal for leaving the project without funding and said he would keep fighting to uphold federal trust responsibilities to Native communities. The project is one of the largest federal Indian water-rights settlement efforts in the Southwest, and its failure to move forward would hit families in McKinley County and surrounding areas that have waited for a reliable supply of water for decades.
Authorized by the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, construction on the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project began in 2012. The Bureau of Reclamation says the project is designed to provide a long-term sustainable water supply for the next 40 years to about 250,000 people in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico, including the Navajo Nation, the City of Gallup and the Jicarilla Apache Nation. It is meant to deliver 37,764 acre-feet of water each year from the San Juan Basin.
Water deliveries to Navajo communities began on the Cutter Lateral in 2020, but the system is not finished. Reclamation extended the completion deadline to Dec. 31, 2029, through an agreement involving the U.S. Department of the Interior, the Navajo Nation and the New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission. The agency has described the project as the cornerstone of the Navajo Nation Water Rights Settlement in the San Juan River Basin.
New Mexico’s congressional delegation has spent the last year trying to keep the project moving. In 2025, Sen. Martin Heinrich said he secured $55 million in fiscal 2026 appropriations and language limiting Gallup’s total contribution to $76 million. Luján, Heinrich and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández also said they secured a provision to raise the project’s cost ceiling and direct $120 million through the Reclamation Water Settlements Fund.
Luján, Heinrich, Leger Fernández and Sen. John Curtis later reintroduced the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Amendments Act of 2025 to give the project more time and resources for completion and long-term operations and maintenance. Luján has warned that cutting or delaying funding could leave communities without water even as the project nears completion.
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