This bill approves and funds a settlement resolving the Zuni Tribe's long-disputed water rights claims in the Zuni River Stream System in New Mexico, while also protecting the culturally significant Zuni Salt Lake. It formally recognizes the tribe's water rights, holds them in federal trust, and prevents those rights from being lost through non-use, while ensuring that individual landowners with allotments retain their separate water claims. To implement the settlement, the bill authorizes roughly $685 million in federal funding to be placed in trust accounts for water infrastructure, environmental compliance, and long-term operation and maintenance, with New Mexico also contributing over $1 million toward monitoring and mitigation costs. In exchange for these benefits, the tribe and the federal government agree to waive further water rights claims tied to the settlement. Separately, the bill withdraws about 92,000 acres of federal land around the Zuni Salt Lake from mining, drilling, and similar development, restricts certain land uses there to protect the site's cultural and environmental value, and directs the transfer of specified lands into trust for the tribe once the settlement takes legal effect—expected once a federal court approves the agreement and required funding and state legislative actions are completed, with a deadline of July 1, 2030, for finalizing the agreement or the deal expires.
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