WASHINGTON – Today, during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider the nomination of Governor Doug Burgum to serve as the Secretary of the Department of Interior (DOI), Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) questioned Governor Burgum on critical issues affecting Arizona, including Colorado River water management, tribal law enforcement and deficiencies with the Glen Canyon Dam.

GALLEGO: We kind of hit upon this but one of the biggest interior-related issues is going to be the Colorado River. And Arizona is the heart of our national defense when it comes to chip making, agriculture and food security and, of course, home to the fifth-largest and best city in the country. In addition, 22 of the 30 Colorado River Basin Tribes are in Arizona. Rules governing the reduction of the Colorado River water expire at the end of 2026. Post-2026 operation conversations are still ongoing. Lower Basin states have put forth a proposal for management of the Colorado River that shares the risk among all states. However, no agreement has been reached and leading to potential conflicts within the Basin, which of course, we would all like to avoid. Would you work with Arizona parties and my office so that any determination post-2026 is not overly burdensome to any one state and is consistent with the Colorado River compact?

BURGUM: Senator, you bring up an important issue with a 2026 date coming forward. Of course, as you know Interior does have some specific authorities relative to helping with the Lower and Upper Basin. I would say as a former chair of western governors I know this has been a battle that’s going on as long as there been people in the West, people fighting over water in the West. My experience in North Dakota has been more on the Missouri River Basin, but also we’ve been in some deep battles with Canada because we have got two rivers that are in North Dakota that actually flow north into Canada, the Souris River and the Red River to the north. So whether it’s international or the complexities [of] the Missouri, I’ve got some good understanding and good exposure to this. I think you can count on — we will look for a collaborative solution that serves everyone. Also, we have to look for innovation on the conservation side because we can’t make more water, but if we can use what we have wisely, that’s going to look for the best solutions for all. I appreciate you being engaged with this, I know how important it is to Arizona and its economy.

GALLEGO: In our meeting, we also discussed our Tribal communities and Tribal nations. I’m very glad we have good background and understanding and relationships with them. We talked about tribal law enforcement, some of the bills I’ve put forward to increase tribal law enforcement. Unfortunately, we see high rates of missing and murdered women as well as other violent crimes, a lot of this really due to lack of tribal law enforcement and communication with agencies that are supposed to have oversight and collaboration. I have worked through my time in Congress to try to increase the funding for tribal law enforcement, but our federal budget cuts put all that work at risk. Can you tell me what is your plan to work collaboratively with Congress and tribes across the country on tribal law enforcement and proven efforts, and how do you plan to ensure we can do this in a bipartisan manner?

BURGUM: I think there’s nothing partisan about enforcing the law protecting the citizens of the United States and one of the great tragedies in our country is the lack of law enforcement on tribal lands and the fact we’ve got organized crime that is preying on those gaps. They are aware the gaps are there whether it’s training centers – Senator Hoeven has been particularly supportive along with senator Cramer – we don’t have enough training centers across the nation for the northern tribes or the southern tribes. We need more recruiting, we need more staffing, we need lots of other things that are going on. You mentioned first time it’s come up but the missing and murdered Indigenous women. This is again an unseen tragedy in America. Over 6,000 unsolved cases, and I believe again it is a complete tragedy. It seems we lose a college student at spring break, it’s a Netflix series and the whole nation knows her name personally, and then we have the same individual tragedy that happens over and over in Indian country, and people are not even aware that it’s going on. We’ve got to change our entire approach.

GALLEGO: Thank you again for that, and I look forward to working with you on that, a lot of sensitive history of House side on this. The last four years we’ve learned from Reclamation that the Glen Canyon Dam has some design flaws that limit its ability to pass water at lower elevations. Which means we have to fix that dam and pretty soon. We need the ability to pass water around the dam if we can’t go through it, especially if the hydrology in the region gets worse. How would you make fixing the dam that delivers water to the Grand Canyon and the 30 million people downstream from that Lower Basin and, of course, Mexico as part of our treaty obligations a priority?

BURGUM: I appreciate you bringing that to my attention. This is one issue I was not aware of about the Glen Canyon Dam deficiencies, but obviously with the Bureau of Reclamation being the second largest operator of hydroelectric dams in the country behind the Army Corps of Engineers, I will quickly be meeting with the team if I have the privilege of being confirmed for this position about this issue because we’ve got to working facilities on these critical rivers. And as we know we’ve got to have more reservoir capability because part of the issue we’re facing is we not only need to fix but we need to upgrade some of these so we can add more storage.

GALLEGO: I’d love to work on that. Thank you.