Cost of litigation not just a scare tactic
Hey savvy news reader! Thanks for choosing local.
You are now reading
1 of 3 free articles.
Editor,
There are those who would have us believe that the water adjudication process is a simple one. It is not. A rancher with a several-thousand acre ranch in the Teton River Basin near Choteau paid a quarter of a million dollars in fees for lawyers and a hydrologist to resolve objections to his claims. The adjudication took over five years to complete and took a considerable amount of the owner’s time during that period. During the five years it took to complete the adjudication, there was considerable stress between neighbors, as the adjudication process pits neighbors against neighbors.
The adjudication of the Flathead Indian Irrigation Project will be challenged. The tribes and the joint board will be competing for the same water, and the tribe has the senior water right. No matter what happens, one of the parties is not going to like the water allocation they get; it will move to the Montana Supreme Court. Historically, the tribes have overwhelmingly won their cases before our Supreme Court; the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has also supported the tribes’ litigation, as has the U.S. Supreme Court.
I researched two other states’ results with litigation against tribal water rights, and both had very different outcomes. In the Wyoming case, tribal water rights were defined very narrowly, and in the Arizona case, tribal water rights were defined very broadly; both were supported by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Adjudication will lead to litigation and, if history in the State of Montana bears out, the tribes will prevail and the non-tribal residents will get what is left over. The water compact and the irrigation water agreement protect non-tribal water users on the Flathead Reservation. Do not trust the courts to do the same.
Susan Lake
Ronan
