WSP03082

• File Number: 8064
• Description: Section "D" General Federal Issues/Policies - Indian Water Rights
• Date: 4/19/1985
• Title: Final Report of Tribal Negotiating Team to Fort Peck Tribal Executive Board of Fort Peck-Montana Water Compact
• Water Supply Pro - Doc Type: Report/Study

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'634
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Tribes' water right was calculated b~3considering only these
acres presently in Indian ownership.

At the November 1982 Billings meeting the parties
agreed to an average water duty of 3.6 acre-feet per acre.
This resulted in the annual diversion figure of lr050,472
acre-feet. Consumptive use for irrigation was calculated to be
1.8 acre-feet per acre for full service irri~~tion, because a
50 percent average efficiency was agreed to. The Tribal
Water Right in Section A is thus stated alternatively in terms
of diversions and consumptive uses, whichever is less.

Places of diversion: Early in the negotiations, the
Tribes agreed to emphasize diversion of water out of the
Missouri River. They finally agreed not to divert surface
water from the mainstem of the Milk River (see, e.g., Tr. Sept.
24, 19B1, pp. 40, 56), because Stetson Engineers advised the
tribal negotiating team that most if not all Indian lands that

23The 1,050,472 acre-foot ceiling on diversions in the
Compact is a firm quantification of the Tribal Water Right. In
1983, the State had agreed that the quantity of the Tribes'
water rights should increase if Indian ownership of irrigable
land on the Reservation increases, and decrease if it
decreases. Article III A of the 1983 Compact thus used the
entire 501,755 acres as a maximum irrigable land base, but
provided that the Tribes could only irrigate lands in Indian
ownership or within the Fort Peck Irrigation Project at a given
time, and set out a procedure for periodic determination of
those lanos. In 1984, the State proposed a firm quantification
(Tr. Nov. 13-14, 1984 at 139; Memorandum No. 251-84 from
Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse & Guido, dated November 15, 1984, and
enclosed in Appendix G), and after negotiation (e.g., id. Tr.
140-143), the tribal negotiating team agreed. --

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241 'd" d .
n measurlng lverSlons an consumptlve uses, agreement
was reached at the February 27, 1985 meeting on how evaporation
from storage reservoirs constructed for conservation
(carry-over) storages would be measure.d.,. (Tr. 52-56). Net
evaporation from a reservoir built in the future for
"conservation (carry-over) storage" will be counted as a
consumptive use of water to the extent that such evaporation
loss exceeds the consumptive use that occurred in the reservoir
area before construction of the reservoir. Evaporation of a
reservoir built for "regulatory storage" as part of a
distribution system is not. These terms are defined in Article
II (4) and (20). Impoundment of water in an on-stream
reservoir counts as a diversion, measured as provided in
Article II (7).

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