Ten States Support Water Agencies Legal Battle With Tribe Over Groundwater

PALM SPRINGS, CA — Ten western states are backing two Coachella Valley water agencies in their legal battle with the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians over local groundwater rights. The states filed a "friends of the court" brief this week, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the tribe's lawsuit, filed against the Desert Water Agency and the Coachella Valley Water District in 2013.

The suit resulted in a court ruling that the tribe has a federally established right to groundwater in the Coachella Valley.

In March, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's 2015 decision backing the tribe's claim to the groundwater aquifer managed by the agencies.

Both agencies announced the following month that they would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which is expected to announce this fall whether it will hear the case.

Should the Supreme Court uphold the lower court ruling, the next phase of the lawsuit will determine whether there is a water quality component to the tribe's water right, the standard for quantifying the tribe's right and whether the tribe owns the pore space underlying the Agua Caliente Indian Reservation.

Tribal officials praised the decision, saying it "validates the tribe's work to protect and preserve the Coachella Valley's most important natural resource," according to Tribal Chairman Jeff L. Grubbe.

"This is another critical step toward how water will be responsibly managed in the future," Grubbe said.

The agencies have countered the tribe has not publicly declared how much of the water it is seeking, nor how it would use it.

"Our groundwater has been a shared local resource that the public and the tribe can access equally," said DWA Board President James Cioffi.

"The Agua Caliente tribe is looking to get special rights to the groundwater we rely on and, frankly, we don't know what exactly they want or how much that could impact our community."

Representatives from Nevada, one of the states that filed the brief, stated that the case "has tremendous implications for states managing finite groundwater resources...a state's effort to effectively manage those limited water resources will be thrown out of balance."

California was not among the states that filed the brief, which included Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

— By City News Service / Image via Shutterstock