Cutter Lateral Water Supply Project

This project shows how setting an example of the highest standards of integrity can cascade both internally throughout a consultant’s employees and externally to foster increased trust not only between consultant and client, but also between formerly adversarial clients. This increased the level of trust, which SMA took years to cultivate, allowed ten communities in three sovereign nations (Navajo, Jicarilla Apache, and nonindigenous) to collaborate for the first time to resolve a regional water crisis and construct a sustainable water supply system using renewable surface water. Moreover, SMA actively sought out and listened to the opinions of local leaders and residents regarding project design, which resulted in a much higher quality product, reduced environmental and archaeological impacts, and a
27% reduction in construction cost (as compared with U.S. Bureau of Reclamation cost estimates). SMA successfully advocated for a portion of these savings to be used to connect an additional Navajo community, originally excluded from the Federal government’s project area, and to construct water distribution lines to bring firsttime running water to over 200 individuals originally excluded from the Federal project scope. After increasing the scope to provide these additional benefits, the overall project was still completed $19 million under budget.