BOARD01872

• Board Meeting Date: 9/27/1999
• Description: Colorado River Basin Issues - Interior Department's Indian Water Rights Report
• Board Meetings - Doc Type: Memo

DRAFT -- August 11, 1999

OBJECTIVE #1:

When federal agencies play a role in the development of
water resources (permitting, financing, construction, and/or
environmental review) in river basins where Indian tribes
hold water rights, consideration of the effect of that
development on the exercise of Indian water rights should
begin as early in the process as possible, consistent with
the Federal trust responsibility for Indian natural resources.

Recommendation 1.A: The Secretary should ask the Interagency
Working Group on Environmental Justice, created pursuant to E.O.
12898, to direct federal agencies to take into account the effect
their actions in Western stream systems may have on the future
exercise of Indian water rights.

EXPLANATION: Pursuant to E.O. 12898, the Council on Environmen-
tal Quality has already provided general guidance to federal
agencies on procedures to implement the National Environmental
Policy Act in a manner which takes into account the effects of
agency actions on Native American communities and the
government's trust responsibility to Indian tribes. However,
because Indian water rights may not have been exercised in a
given stream system, there is a tendency to ignore or defer
consideration of the impacts of other proposed development on the
future exercise of those rights. When such development has an
adverse impact on riparian ecosystems, Indian tribes may later
have to bear the burden of insuring that their future water
resource development is not likely to jeopardize the existence of
species listed under the ESA. Implementation of this recom-
mendation would be consistent with the federal trust responsibil-
ity for Indian trust resources, with 512 DM 2, and with the
Presidential Memorandum of April 29, 1994, on Government-to-
Government Relations with Native American Tribal Governments.

Recommendation 1.B.: The Secretary should ask the Council
on Environmental Quality to amend its Guidance Under the National
Environmental Policy Act, issued pursuant to E.O. 12898, to
provide express direction to federal agencies to consider, in the
preparation of Environmental Impact Statements and Environmental
Assessments, the direct and indirect effects of the proposed
action on Indian trust assets, including the present or future
exercise of Indian water rights. Agencies should be directed to
include alternatives that minimize adverse impacts on the present
and future exercise of Indian water rights in each EIS assessing
the impact of water development.

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