Respect Tribe’s Water Rights

Broken promises were the hallmark of relations between the U.S. government and the Indian tribes of the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Then the issue was land. Now, with a small tribe in California’s far north, it’s water. As with many water issues, the issue of who’s right is being tromped by whoever has the water.

In 1955, Congress approved the diversion of water from the Trinity River, which rises in the Trinity Alps and, joining the Klamath River, flows into the Pacific north of Eureka. The Trinity runs through the 90,000-acre Hoopa Valley reservation just upstream from its junction with the Klamath.

Since 1964, however, water stored behind Trinity Dam has flowed through a tunnel to the Sacramento River. Then it traverses the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the Westlands Water District nearly 300 miles south of the dam.

Congress promised the Hoopa back then that their water needs would always come before those of San Joaquin Valley farmers. In 1955, Rep. Clair Engle, the local Democratic congressman, promised that “not one bucketful” of water needed by the Hoopa tribe and other local users would be taken.

The Trinity River basin and its rich salmon run was critical to the 2,200-member tribe’s culture, religion and economy. Congress envisioned diverting 56% of the Trinity’s flows in normal years, leaving the rest in the river. But actual diversions have averaged 72% a year and have gone as high as 90% in some years.

The reduced flow has devastated the salmon and steelhead runs and left spawning grounds silted over because of the lack of flood flows during the spring, flows that instead have gone to filling Trinity Reservoir.

In 1992, Congress passed a new law to fix environmental damage caused by the Central Valley Project, including the Trinity diversion. A study ordered by that act concluded in 1999 that only 53% of the Trinity waters should usually be sent south, and much less in dry years. The rest was needed for fish and wildlife restoration in the Trinity basin. The finding was ratified in 2000 by Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.

But Westlands feared losing water and sued to overturn the Babbitt order. The suit is pending in federal court in Fresno. The Hoopa have joined the federal government in defending the order. The tribe also is sponsoring an amendment to a Senate bill dealing with Indian affairs to uphold the Babbitt decree.

Seeing this as just a matter of crops versus fish is not quite right. The irony at the bottom of the dispute is that the federal government wants to fallow thousands of acres in the Westlands district because the soil does not drain well. It is becoming saturated with salts and impossible to farm. In time the Westlands district probably will have no use for the water it is fighting for. That should make it easier to cut Trinity River diversions and finally fulfill the 1955 promise to the Hoopa.