The dam and the resultant lake also had the secondary purposes of creating recreational and wildlife habitat resources.

Stored floodwaters are released when downstream channel conditions permit, all in accordance with the provisions of Public Law 86-645 and the Rio Grande Compact.

Since the Cochiti project was already underway by this time, the proposal was abandoned, and considerations moved to damsites in Idaho and Oregon.

[12] The filling of the lake inundated the Cochiti Diversion Dam which had previously been used for irrigation purposes, and which had been rehabilitated by the United States Bureau of Reclamation in 1958 as part of the Middle Rio Grande Project.

The Cochiti Keres filed a lawsuit against the Army Corps of Engineers regarding the inundation of their lands, winning the suit.

[15] Other lands around the lake are owned by and are part of the Pueblo de Cochiti Indian Reservation and are not open to the public.

[18] The Pueblo of Cochiti have a long rich history dating back to the Ancestral Puebloans who settled near Frijoles Canyon around 1250 AD.

[19] From the beginning, their lives were controlled by the Spanish until 1581 but continued undergoing slavery, false imprisonment, and the banning of cultural and religious practices.

[21] The lake and Dam are located in Sandoval County, New Mexico, and within the reservation of the Pueblo de Cochiti Nation.

[21] Indigenous peoples have a long history of surviving, adapting, and connecting to the environment in a unique and special way.

[24] Indigenous peoples treat the land as a sacred place that for millennia has been used for ecological and spiritual practices.

[25] Infrastructure and construction at the governmental level have a long history of uprooting indigenous communities and reservations around the United States.

[20] According to Regis Pecos, a lifetime member of the Traditional Tribal Council, since the creation of the lake and the dam “Cochiti Pueblo has been in a fight for their survival culturally, politically, legally, economically, and environmentally”.

We are committed to creating high-quality opportunities for our community members while enhancing our tribal infrastructure to maintain our inherent sovereignty”.

The Pueblo of Cochiti are trying to get their land back and maintain their own sovereignty[26] and not be controlled and managed by the government.

After World War II, the Pueblos of Cochiti had to combine their old ways of life with newer off-reservation employment to continue to survive.

[27] Years after the report was filed, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed a drainage system that was 17 acres, but it was ineffective.

[27] In 1987 professors at New Mexico State University found that 550 of the 800 acres of the irrigated Cochiti tribal land was now unsuitable to use for agricultural practices.

[21] The Pueblo of Cochiti filed another lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to hold them liable for the destruction, devastation, and violation of their sacred lands and the abominable impacts the Dam has had on their reservation.

This means that the Pueblo of Cochiti would be able to reacquire their ancestral homelands for free, not having to pay any federal, state, or local governments,[21] but this has yet to pass.

This makes it practically impossible for the Pueblo of Cochiti to reclaim their land due to the high economic price and stress in a short amount of time.