A group of ranchers and the Idaho Farm Bureau Federation (IFBF) have intervened in an Idaho water rights lawsuit by the federal government over statutes passed regarding stock water rights.
Chief Judge David C. Nye for the U.S. District Court of Idaho granted the motion to intervene for Joyce Livestock Co., L.U. Ranching Co., Pickett Ranch and Sheep Co. and the IFBF on Sept. 2. Nye said the court finds that the ranchers “have significant protectable interests that are not adequately represented by the existing parties or the Legislature.”
The Idaho Legislature also sought to intervene in the suit, as it claims an interest relating to the property or transaction that is the subject of the action, and the Legislature says it would have statewide ramifications. The court hasn’t yet ruled on whether the Idaho Legislature can intervene.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed the lawsuit in June against the state of Idaho and the Idaho Department of Water Resources, claiming statutes passed in the last five years threaten to forfeit federally owned stock water rights and prohibit any federal agency from acquiring rights, according to court documents.
The documents continue to say that statutes “make certain stockwater rights associated with federal lands appurtenant to the private property of federal permittees, rather than to the place of use; and establish a framework for widespread forfeiture of existing federally owned stockwater rights.”
The DOJ contends federal laws take precedence over state laws, and the state’s forfeiture procedure violates the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy, property and contract clauses, plus parts of the Idaho Constitution.
The attorney general’s office admitted in their rebuttal that the statutes address forfeiture of stock water rights based on state law but denied they undermine any “congressionally authorized federal grazing program.”
Mountain States Legal Foundation (MSLF), representing the ranchers and IFBF, said in a statement the state’s laws on stock water rights must be put to beneficial use or be forfeited. MSLF contends the federal government is seeking to nullify the state’s administrative procedure and retain the stock water rights it is at risk of losing.
MSLF attorney Joe Bingham said, “Congress never reserved stockwater rights on national forest land, and the U.S. Constitution’s system of federalism makes Idaho best equipped to manage its waters.”
The case derives from the Snake River Basin Adjudication (SRBA), which began in 1987 and culminated in 2014, that “decreed thousands of stockwater rights to the U.S. for use by such federally permitted, but privately owned, livestock.”
SRBA decreed 15,000 stock water rights associated with lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management, of which approximately 6,485 rights were for instream stock watering.
In 2002, the DOJ and a group known as the Federal Stock Water Group settled on stock water rights on federal land used by the permittees, with the permittees’ rights being given a senior priority date to the U.S.’ rights and the permittees withdrawing their objection to U.S. stock water claims.
The DOJ case also stems from a 2007 Idaho Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the federal government was not exempt from the beneficial use law. The court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the Joyce Livestock Company established a water right and disallowed the U.S. water right claims.
Idaho lawmakers and ranchers interpreted the ruling as the federal government does not put the water to beneficial use, as it does not own cattle to graze the land.
Idaho lawmakers in 2017 passed a law that, according to an affidavit filed by Idaho Senate President Pro Tempore Chuck Winder (R), “clarifies that a grazing permittee cannot be considered an agent of the federal government.”
In an affidavit to the court, Don Pickett, co-owner of Pickett Ranch & Sheep Co., said the SRBA “process severely limits our exercise of our water rights and (renders) them effectively worthless, because it allows the federal government to dictate our use of our own stock water rights.”
According to The Associated Press (AP), ranchers and the Idaho Department of Water Resources have initiated 254 claims seeking to get control of water rights on federal grazing allotments, which was the impetus for DOJ to file suit.
Bingham said it is about more than making the federal government adhere to the same rules and laws as ranchers and the state. Bingham surmised the case could set the precedence for other Western states.
“In the long run, the federal government’s fanciful legal theories threaten Idaho’s sovereignty, its ranchers’ livelihood and the sovereignty of other states,” Bingham stated.
“The law is crystal clear—Idaho’s waters belong to Idaho, who have entrusted it to their state government, not Washington, D.C.”
“This is really a state’s rights vs. federal rights issue,” Marie Callaway Kellner, conservation program director of the Idaho Conservation League, told the AP. — Charles Wallace, WLJ editor
