MWD Loses Out to Indians in Court Ruling on Water

A federal appeals court handed a victory Wednesday to Indian tribes seeking a greater share of water from the Colorado River, ruling that the Metropolitan Water District cannot file suit to challenge tribal land boundaries set by the federal government along the river.

Ruling in a water-rights dispute that already stretches back more than 35 years, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a lower court to dismiss the water district’s challenge to a boundary plan that could net Indians along the river up to 70,000 additional acre-feet of water a year to irrigate tribal lands.

The decision was a setback for the Metropolitan Water District, Southern California’s major water supplier and one of several agencies that must stand in line for water allocations behind groups with higher entitlement priorities, including the Indians.

The boundaries of three reservations along the river are crucial, because a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in the 1960s establishing Colorado water rights for feuding entities based the Indians’ allocation on the tribes’ total irrigable acreage.

In the current dispute, the MWD and the much smaller Coachella Valley Water District are challenging the secretary of the Interior’s decision that the Ft. Mojave Indian Reservation contains 3,500 more acres than it did under the old tribal boundaries. That decision said the tribe was entitled to an increase in water rights--an increase that undoubtedly would have come from Southern California’s water share.

Similar boundary disputes are pending for land along the river held by the Colorado River and Quechan Indian tribes.

A U.S. District Court judge in San Diego had sided with the MWD in its challenge to the new boundaries.

But a three-member federal appeals panel ruled Wednesday that the government, as trustee of Indian lands, is immune from Indian land title suits.

“To allow this suit would permit third parties to interfere with the government’s responsibilities to Indian tribes in respect to the lands it holds in trust for them,” Judges James R. Browning, Betty B. Fletcher and Cecil F. Poole wrote in a unanimous decision.

However, while the court’s ruling prevents the MWD from challenging the boundary limits in the trial courts, it leaves undecided the final issue of how much water the Indians are entitled to. And most lawyers in the case predicted that that issue will be determined by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It’s good for us, because they can’t challenge our title to the land. But on the other hand we’re back to where we started from, because we don’t have any water rights for the land,” said Dale White, an attorney for the Mojave tribe.

Warren Abbott, counsel for the MWD, said the Supreme Court has already ruled that the federal government has no right to unilaterally establish boundaries for the tribal lands. But he said he is uncertain how the boundaries would be set in light of the new appellate court ruling.

“The consequences of this are there’s still no adjudication of the boundaries, and the Indians don’t have a right to the water,” Abbott said. “(And) they don’t get the water until we get our day in court.”

The 65,000 to 70,000 acre-feet of water involved in the dispute--enough to cover about 70,000 acres with a foot of water--represents about one-tenth of the MWD’s annual allocation of Colorado River water, which totals about 650,000 acre-feet.

Because of surpluses that are expected to dwindle in coming years, the district has recently been using about 1.2 million acre-feet of water from the river each year.