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Research on rural-urban water struggles establishes the importance of symbolic spatial categories for facilitating and justifying rural-to-urban water transfers. I build on this scholarship by asking how officials construct the rural-urban interface, or patterns of interaction across spatial boundaries, during water conflicts. This study takes a historical case study approach centered on the San Juan-Chama Project (SJCP) in New Mexico (USA), a transbasin diversion authorized in 1962 to bring water from the rural San Juan River Basin into the Rio Grande Basin for urban use. Analysis of archival material, government documents, and secondary accounts show that, although the SJCP would primarily benefit urban places, proponents relied heavily on the project's rural benefits for justification. Through this process, official actors constructed and mobilized rural-urban boundaries in ways that supported greater urban control over regional water resources. These findings have important implications for understanding the formation of rural water injustices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental justice research highlights the distinct processes generating environmental problems in rural places. Rural communities of color suffer the dual disadvantage of spatial and racial marginalization, yet we know little about the role of race and racism within rural environmental inequality formation. This study draws on theories of settler colonialism and rural environmental justice to investigate the historical formation of water inequality in the American Southwest. In 1962, Congress authorized two water projects to divide the San Juan River between the Navajo Nation and New Mexico. The Navajo Indian Irrigation project (NIIP) would develop family farms on the Navajo Nation, while the San Juan‐Chama Project (SJCP) diverted water into the Rio Grande Basin for urban use. While New Mexico's project was completed ahead of schedule in 1973, the NIIP has yet to be finished today, almost six decades later. Using archival material, government documents, and secondary accounts, this study examines racial meanings in the years leading up to NIIP approval. Findings reveal that settler officials used the NIIP as a mechanism to appropriate Native resources. I show how racial projects within NIIP negotiations contributed to colonial domination by diminishing the political sovereignty of the Navajo Nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]