In a case that could have ramifications for farms and ranches across the arid west, a Native American tribe in Coachella, Calif., has set a new precedent for tribal ownership rights to groundwater.
“Tribal water rights stem from the a 1908 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Winters v. United States, which established that tribes’ rights to water are tied to the dates their reservations were created. Generally speaking, that means their water rights pre-date almost all other legal water claims,” says High Country News.
But up until last month, when the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians won a lawsuit that they had filed in 2013 against the Coachella Valley Water District and Desert Water Agency to halt groundwater pumping, tribal water rights weren’t clearly shown to reach all the way to groundwater.
The Coachella Valley receives three to five inches of rain a year, but through heavy groundwater pumping the area supports “400,000 full-time residents, 121 golf courses, and 66,000 acres of dates, lemons, and other crops,” says High Country News. So much extraction worried the Cahuilla Indians.
Their victory in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals “could restrict housing and resort development and set a precedent for water disputes between tribes and utilities across the West,” says High Country News.