Appeals court upholds water ruling for tribe

A federal appeals court has upheld most of a ruling that ordered a rural Nevada irrigation district to pay back billions of gallons of water that it took from a tribe decades ago. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday directed a federal judge in Reno to go back and determine how much more water the Pyramid Lake Paiutes are entitled to as a result of the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District illegally diverting flows for its own farmers and ranchers in northern Nevada's high desert during the 1970s and 1980s. The appellate court rejected most of the district's bid to overturn a 2003 decision that determined the water from Lake Tahoe and other reservoirs should have continued down the Truckee River to help bolster a traditional tribal fishery in serious decline. U.S. District Court Judge Howard McKibben in Reno was correct when he determined at that time the irrigation district had "willfully failed to comply" with a 1973 agreement that divided up the water, according to the opinion Judge Mary Schroeder issued on behalf of a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit in San Francisco. Since then, the district has made "several additional attempts to sidestep accountability" under that agreement, she wrote. A lawyer for the tribe who hailed the ruling as a victory said Wednesday that he is certain it will mean additional water for the tribe and perhaps as much as 75 percent more than McKibben ordered in 2003...more