The most challenging adjudications await the state, since the urbanized corridor of the Rio Grande has yet to be adjudicated. Using Santa Fe and its own modest river as emblematic of this twentieth-century legacy, the chapter then discusses what remains unknown, as the cities of Albuquerque and Las Cruces await some formal sorting of their own water rights. Even more problematically, Pueblo Indian water rights along the Rio Grande have not been quantified or addressed in the courts or in settlements. These future Indian water rights will have upstream and downstream effects on cities and the rural non-Indian water users alike. It will also force the state to reconcile the new demands placed on water in the twenty-first century.
Ácoma, the Sky City: a Study in Pueblo-Indian History and Civilization