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Mixed-Blood Utes Don't Get Water Rights, Ruling Says | 1998

    Published: Oct 19, 1998, 12:00 a.m. MDT


By Deseret News, Lezlee E. Whiting, Correspondent


The assistant secretary of the Interior ruled recently that mixed-blood Ute Indians who were terminated from tribal rolls in 1954 were given their water rights when they were given their share of tribal land and have no right to now share in the management of the tribe's lucrative water resources.

Ute Distribution Corp., the agency established to represent mixed-blood Ute Indians, sued the Ute Tribe in federal court in 1995 asserting "a right of joint management" over about 27 percent of the water rights now held by the tribe.UDC already manages 27 percent of the proceeds from the "indivisible assets" - such as lease payments for gas, oil and mineral rights - which were given to the 490 mixed-blood Utes when their names were taken off tribal rolls.

Attorneys for the group maintained that water rights should be included as "indivisible assets," but in writing the decision for the Interior Department, Acting Assistant Secretary of Interior Michael J. Anderson concluded that tribal water rights "were an asset susceptible to equitable and practicable distribution and this asset had in fact already been divided and distributed."

According to Anderson, the mixed-blood group also has no interest or claim to benefits provided to the tribe in the Central Utah Project Completion Act legislation.

What the decision does is "keep things the way they are now," said Ute Tribe attorney Tod Smith. "I don't think the tribe has ever disputed that if you had land with water rights you had the water, but the UDC took a broad argument that they had joint management. His (Anderson's) contention was the water had already been divided."

As part of the Ute Partition Act, each tribal member who was terminated was given acreage. If the land came with water rights, the mixed-blood member retained that water right. If the land was not irrigable, there was no water. Much of the land, and the associated water rights, distributed to the mixed-bloods has been sold to the Ute Tribe and UDC.

By law, UDC may file an administrative appeal of the decision in U.S. District Court. Smith says because of that, the case is "still active."


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