FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: William Perry Pendley, 303/292-2021, Ext. 30
Wyoming Farm Bureau Defeats EPA Wyoming Land Grab
February 22, 2017
– DENVER, CO. The Wyoming Farm Bureau today celebrated the 2-1 ruling
of a three-judge panel of a Denver-based federal appeals court that
struck down an edict from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
that the Northern Arapahoe Tribe and the Eastern Shoshone Tribe—of the
Wind River Indian Reservation in Fremont and Hot Springs Counties in
west central Wyoming—have jurisdiction over 1.48 million acres of
Wyoming. In early 2014, the group petitioned the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Tenth Circuit contesting the EPA’s December of 2013 decision to
grant “Tribe-as-State” status under the federal Clean Air Act. The Farm
Bureau, some of whose members live, work, and own property in and near
Riverton, argues that the EPA’s decision ignores more than one hundred
years of actions by Congress, Wyoming, the Tribes, and various rulings
by a host of federal and state courts including the Supreme Court of the
United States. During arguments in November of 2015 the parties were
asked to file supplement briefs on whether the withholding of Clean Air
Act funds by the EPA mooted the lawsuit, which the Farm Bureau filed on
December 1, 2015.
“We are thrilled with the ruling by the
panel that 1.48 million acres of Wyoming are no longer considered
‘Indian country’ and therefore the subject of controversy and conflict
over whether the Tribes have jurisdiction over non-Indians and
non-reservation lands,” said William Perry Pendley of Mountain States
Legal Foundation, which represents the Farm Bureau.
In December 2008, both Tribes sought
Tribe-as-State status under §301(d)(2) of the Clean Air Act, which
provides an “express congressional delegation” to tribes of the EPA’s
authority to regulate air quality on fee lands located within the
exterior boundaries of a reservation. The tribes expended 82 of their
87-page application arguing that they possessed jurisdiction over
Riverton. Because their application ignored a host of federal statutes
and federal and state court rulings, in 2009, the State of Wyoming, the
Wyoming Farm Bureau, and other entities filed comments opposing the
application.
The Reservation, which is shared by the
Tribes, was established in 1868. In 1904, the Tribes signed an agreement
with the federal government ceding 1,480,000 acres of land, which were
to be opened for sale under the homestead, townsite, coal, and mineral
land laws, which was entered into with the United States Indian
Inspector in exchange for per capita payments to tribal members and
capital improvement projects inside “the diminished reserve” or
Reservation. In 1905, Congress ratified the 1904 agreement.
In 1906, the ceded lands were opened for
settlement by a Presidential Proclamation and allotments were sold to
non-Indians in an area that today makes up Riverton. In 1939, some
unsold ceded lands were restored to the Reservation, but a significant
portion was not. Riverton is located wholly on lands ceded in the 1904
agreement and never restored to the Tribes.
Mountain States Legal Foundation, created
in 1977, is a nonprofit, public-interest legal foundation dedicated to
individual liberty, the right to own and use property, limited and
ethical government, and the free enterprise system. Its offices are in
suburban Denver, Colorado.
For more information: Wyoming Farm Bureau Federation v. Environmental Protection Agency
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