Project Information

Year Awarded: Fiscal Year 2023

USDA Funding: $22,865,854.00

Partner-Contributed Funding: $35,690,000.00

Project Timeline: 2024-2029

RCPP Conservation Activities: Land Management Contracts

Arizona Counties: Pinal County

Lead Partner: Gila River Indian Community 

Collaborating Partners: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

NRCS Service Center: Casa Grande Field Office

Summary

As a result of this RCPP, the Gila River Indian Community (Community) will fulfill two equally important goals and their corresponding objectives. The fulfillment of these goals and objectives will benefit the Community’s efforts to protect soil productivity and conserve scarce water resources in a time of extraordinary drought and aridification in the Southwest by 1) constructing 8.5 miles of pipeline (in lieu of open channel canal) as part of the Westside IE and IF alignment that will be 100% funded by P-MIP and 2) place in buried pipeline or concrete-lining 7.61 miles of existing earthen ditches in the Blackwater area. These efforts will assist with sustainable agricultural development within the reservation, with all work anticipated to be completed by the winter of 2027. 

Goal #1: Increase agriculture on-reservation in a sustainable and climate-smart manner while also protecting and improving soil productivity and enhancing agricultural resiliency. With continued drought in the Southwest—and with the beginnings of aridification throughout the region—Community lands that have been fallow for decades due to insufficient water caused by upstream diversions or that have been fallowed due to drought conditions will suffer further degradation of the soil and reduced productivity of the land. 

Goal #2: Conserve on-reservation soil productivity and water resources by efficiently and sustainably delivering surface and groundwater via an enclosed irrigation system to agricultural lands within the reservation. With continued drought and a current tier 2A water shortage declaration on the Colorado River, it is imperative that the Community protect its ability to deliver an adequate water supply to tribal growers by piping or concrete-lining existing open channel canals that are currently earthen ditches to conserve water resources.

Resource Concern

Source water depletion

Conservation Practice Offered

Irrigation water management

Project Map

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