Grey v. United States

21 Cl. Ct. 285, 1990 U.S. Claims LEXIS 326, 1990 WL 114434
CourtUnited States Court of Claims
DecidedAugust 9, 1990
DocketNo. 588-84L
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 21 Cl. Ct. 285 (Grey v. United States) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Court of Claims primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Grey v. United States, 21 Cl. Ct. 285, 1990 U.S. Claims LEXIS 326, 1990 WL 114434 (cc 1990).

Opinion

OPINION

MOODY R. TIDWELL, III, Judge:

This action addresses the delivery of irrigation water resources to Native American Allottees residing on the Salt River Indian Reservation. Water resources of the Salt River Valley are controlled by the Salt River Project whose six reservoirs store water from the Salt and Verde Rivers. The stored water is then delivered to the reservation and to more than 1.5 million people living in the Phoenix Metropolitan area.

Plaintiffs are holders of fractional to full interests in various allotments of lands on the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation. They claim damages resulting from the failure of United States government officials “to administer their responsibility to control lawful delivery of irrigation water from the Salt River to the allotted lands of the ... Indian Reservation.” Plaintiffs assert that the government had a duty to deliver water to their allotted lands which duty was breached.

The parties presented evidence on two key issues at trial. First, whether this court has jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ claims by virtue of a statute or regulation which can be fairly interpreted as mandating compensation by the federal government for failure to deliver surface water to allotted Indian lands. And, if so, whether the failure to deliver water in accordance with Winters v. United States, 207 U.S. 564, 28 S.Ct. 207, 52 L.Ed. 340 (1908)1 from water stored in the Salt River Reclamation Project area to individual allottees constituted an actionable breach.

Plaintiffs claim entitlement to damages resulting from having to pay higher prices for water deliveries to their lands than others paid for water deliveries to non-reservation lands. After reviewing the evidence presented at trial, and for the reasons that follow, the court finds that plaintiffs are not entitled to recover.

FACTS

The Salt River valley is part of the arid desert surrounding Phoenix, Arizona. The hot, dry desert climate is incapable of sustaining substantial vegetation without irrigation. The amount of rainfall varies widely. In dry years the flow of the Salt River diminishes sharply, yet rainfall can occur for short intense periods and produce a substantial run-off resulting in flooding along the river. Without regulation of the stream flow floods cause injury to landowners. Flood water is lost instead of being stored for delivery during draught periods.

The Pima and Maricopa tribes have a long history2 of diverting water from the Salt River to irrigate their lands and grow crops. Arizona v. California, 373 U.S. 546, 552, 83 S.Ct. 1468, 1473, 10 L.Ed.2d 542 (1963). In fact, Father Eusebio Kino found ancestors of the Pima Indians prac[288]*288ticing fairly sophisticated irrigation agriculture in the nearby Gila River Valley during his visits to the area in the 1690’s.3 The Indians used rock and brush dams to divert water from rivers to canals and onto arid lands to irrigate corn, beans, squash, and melons. By the time Arizona became a territory under the sovereignty of the United States in 1863 the Pima and Maricopa Indians were a self sufficient, pastoral people. United States government officials reported that the Indians had developed an agricultural society with entrepreneurial skills that relied on irrigation of tribal lands to produce crops for consumption and sale.

Later immigrants and settlers established farms and displaced the Indians. As early as 1870 farming operations of the Pima and Maricopa Indians along the Gila River were disrupted by upstream diversions of water by white farmers and miners. In 1878, Captain Adana A. Chaffee, of the United States Army, reported that settlers south of the Salt River were attempting to take lands of the Pima Indians who lived and farmed by the river. Chaffee described the actions of the settlers as “nothing more or less than a legal steal of about a thousand acres of improved land, or rather, the improvements put upon the lands by the Indians ...” Letter from Captain Adana Chaffee to the Assistant Adjutant General, Headquarters, Department of Arizona, Prescott Barracks (Nov. 24, 1878). During this same time period the Indians were charged with trespass because some of their animals grazed on lands white farmers had “settled.” A month later General Erwin McDowell reacted to Captain Chaffee’s report:

There is no question in my mind as to the duty of the United States Government toward these Indians, who did more to give peace and security to Arizona than all the white troops combined, and who are not nomads but farmers and intelligent people, fully susceptible of being civilized. The United States should at once take measures, by injunction or otherwise, to restore to these Indians the rights to water to which they are entitled.
But as it will take time to do this and as the present exigency does not admit of delay I ask that an additional reservation be at once declared for them, ...

Letter from General Erwin McDowell to Headquarters Military Division of the Pacific and Department of California (Dec. 23, 1878). In response, by Executive Order, and not by treaty, President Rutherford B. Hays established a reservation of approximately 51,000-acres. Executive Order, June 14, 1879. The reservation has a southern boundary along the middle of the Salt River. The Indians relocated from the Gila River Valley to the reservation located south and west of the confluence of the Salt and Verde Rivers. The reservation is now adjacent to the Phoenix Metropolitan area and its borders abut the cities of Scottsdale, Mesa, and Tempe, Arizona.

From the creation of the reservation in 1879 the Indians diverted Salt River water for irrigation of lands on the north side of the Salt River by building more brush and rock dams. The Indian system for water diversion was rendered ineffective by the construction of Granite Reef Dam and Arizona Canal in 1884. The Arizona Canal runs essentially from east to west through the Salt River Indian Reservation, continues for a total distance of forty miles across the Salt River Valley, and constitutes the northern limit of the lands irrigated by river water. In July 1884 a lateral from the Arizona canal, called the Indian Ditch, was constructed to provide a source of water for Indian lands.

In 1902 the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to withdraw Salt River Valley lands for construction of the Salt River Federal Reclamation Project. In 1903 a water user’s association was formed which did not include the Indian reservation in the Project area and in 1904, the Secretary entered into a contract with the user’s association for repayment of Project costs. The contract provided that only members [289]*289of the user’s association could receive water from the Salt River Project.

In 1905 a lawsuit was filed in Arizona territorial court to clarify water rights in the Salt River Project area. The federal government filed claims on behalf of the Salt River Reservation asserting the Indians’ prior appropriation rights under state law. These claims were not amended by the Justice Department following the landmark decision in Winters, 207 U.S. 564, 28 S.Ct. 207, 52 L.Ed. 340 (1908), because of its position that

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21 Cl. Ct. 285, 1990 U.S. Claims LEXIS 326, 1990 WL 114434, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/grey-v-united-states-cc-1990.