Two water districts have been fighting the tribe in court for four years, and on Wednesday the agencies filed petitions to appeal to the Supreme Court.
The Desert Water Agency and the Coachella Valley Water District are challenging a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled the tribe has a right to groundwater that was established when the federal government created the reservation in the 1870s.
Managers of the water agencies argue the aquifer is a public resource and the tribe has the same rights under California law as all other landowners to use water pumped from the aquifer.
The water agencies’ managers have questioned Grubbe’s comments, saying the tribe is welcome to participate in managing the aquifer as one of the stakeholders in the community.
“They have just as much a seat as anybody else, if they want it.” Grubbe wasn’t available to comment on the water agencies’ petitions to the Supreme Court this week.
Outside a Ralphs supermarket on reservation land, retiree Bob Valdez said he thinks it’s wasteful for the water districts to be spending so much money fighting the lawsuit.
Lamelle Edington, a Desert Hot Springs resident, agreed that the tribe seems to be in the right.
“It’s their water.
CVWD said in its petition that in the Winters case, the tribes on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana sued “because their water supply was threatened by settlers who had diverted the river upstream of the reservation and claimed rights to the water.” CVWD said the purpose of the Winters doctrine “has always been to protect tribal reservations from depletion of the water they need for survival.” The water district argued that the Agua Caliente tribe’s case is different and that federal reserved rights shouldn’t apply to groundwater at all.
“What the Tribe is seeking… is a federal reserved right to groundwater that the Tribe does not need,” CVWD said in its petition.