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Show 174 UPDATING THE HOOVER DAM DOCUMENTS the Palo Verde Irrigation District priority date of 1877, and asserted that the doctrine of "relation back" which, for example, led to the stipulated priority date of 1901 for Imperial Irrigation District's PPR, was inapplicable to the Tribes PPRs. They also rejected the States argument that there was ample water available in the river and in storage to satisfy all PPRs and claimed there was insufficient water in the mainstream for the Central Arizona Project, an assertion denied by the States engineers. They stated that if there was ample water, why not give the Indian PPRs priority over the non-Indian PPRs, but indicated that such a priority should extend not only to the Indian PPRs set out in Article II(D) of the Decree, but to additional acreages found to be irrigable either by land reclassification or by enlargement of the Reservation's boundaries. The States were unwilling to agree to a priority which, according to them, was open-ended and so advised the Solicitor on April 7, 1975. At that time they charged that the Tribes were holding up the draft stipulation in order to gain additional water under Arizona v. California, and urged that a decision on the stipulation should not be further delayed. The Tribes launched a four-prong attack on the non-Indian PPR claims in the proposed Stipulation. (1) The Associate Solicitor, Division of Indian Affairs, Reid P. Chambers, prepared memoranda to the Solicitor dated January 14, 1975, asserting that the doctrine of "relation back," whereby the water rights claimed by the several irrigation districts related back under State law either to the date of the initial filing of notices of appropriations or to the date of the commencement of construction of diversion facilities, was not applicable as against the United States. He also urged an immemorial priority for the five Colorado River Indian Reservations and stated that the enlargement of the boundaries of the Reservations by the Secretary and the additional acreages in these Reservations by the Secretary and the additional acreages in these Reservations should increase the irrigable areas for which PPRs should attach as well as for the acreage not considered "irrigable" in Arizona v. California but under reexamination in the then incomplete Earth Environmental Consultants, Inc., report. In an opinion of May 15, 1976, Mr. Milton N. Nathanson, the former Interior Field Solicitor, Riverside, Special Consultant to Reclamation, provided Reclamation with an analysis of the foregoing memoranda which rejected their findings as irrelevant to the issue at hand and not in accordance with the Decree provisions. Likewise, Interior's Field Solicitor Thomas A. Hine's memorandum of May 26, 1976, to the Solicitor, agreed with Mr. Nathanson. (2) On July 25, 1975, pursuant to a contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, W.S. Gookin & Associates attacked each of the major PPR claims in California and Arizona. For example, Gookin challenged the Palo Verde Irrigation District PPR priority date of 1877 and questioned whether the delivery of water to Imperial Irrigation District satisfied the Decree requirement of a defined area of land. These comments were reviewed by Mr. Nathanson, and, in turn, were rejected by him as based on questionable legal and factual assumptions. Reclamation also adopted Mr. Nathanson's comments and transmitted them to the Solicitor with its memorandum of December 2, 1975. (3) The Earth Environmental Consultants, Inc., study was completed in March 1975 and concluded that there were approximately 50,000 acres of land on the five Colorado River Indian Reservations, in addition to the 136,636 acres for which the Decree established PPRs, which, based on soil classifications, were irrigable, but assumed water could be delivered to these areas regardless of economics or practicability. The United. States had made no PPR claims for this acreage in presenting its evidence in Arizona v. California on the premise that it was impracticable to irrigate it. The Earth Environmental Consultants results were challenged by the States in a memorandum dated August 25, 1975, which requested that Interior make its own irrigabil-ity study, but this was not done although the Solicitor requested such a study (see Solicitor's memorandum to Under Secretary of June 7, 1976). Reclamation's preliminary evaluation likewise considered the Earth Environmental Consultants study inadequate to determine the economic suitability of the lands for irrigation (see memorandum of October 24, 1975, from the Regional Director to the Commissioner, and Reclamation's memorandum to Solicitor dated December 2, 1975). (4) On August 13, 1975, Mr. William Veeder presented a detailed critique on alleged shortcomings in the PPR stipulation advocated by Reclamation and the States. |