Gros Ventre and Tribes of the Fort Belknap Indian Community Water Rights Settlement Act of 2019 (S. 3113/H.R. 5673)

The Fort Belknap Indian Community (FBIC) Water Rights Settlement Act was introduced in the Senate by Senator Tester on December 19, 2019, and in the House by Representative Gallego on January 24, 2020. Hearings are needed in the Senate and the House to obtain Interior’s views, promote resolution of any issues, and finalize mitigation for non-Indian water users.

The Act will ratify the 2001 Water Compact reached by FBIC, , and the U.S. The Compact quantifies FBIC’s water rights, confirms tribal jurisdiction over those water rights, protects existing non-Indian water users, and provides certainty for water users in northcentral Montana. The Compact overwhelmingly passed the Montana Legislature on a bi-partisan basis.

The Act will also provide funding for vital water infrastructure on the Fort Belknap Reservation. The water settlement will provide a substantial economic boost for the Reservation with the highest poverty rate in Montana, and benefit the entire region. Settlement is needed before the begins adjudicating FBIC’s water rights. Litigation would waste resources, prolong uncertainty and jeopardize existing water uses.

Passage of the Act will settle FBIC’s claims against the U.S. for its failure to protect FBIC’s water rights over more than 100 years. A portion of FBIC’s water rights was first affirmed in the 1908 Supreme Court case Winters v. U.S. This case recognized that the establishment of Indian reservations included the water rights necessary to provide tribes with a permanent homeland.

The Act includes the waters of the Milk River and its tributaries, the Peoples Creek Basin, the Beaver Creek Basin, the Basin within the Reservation, and Sub-Marginal lands adjacent to the Reservation. The Act provides:

• water for irrigation, livestock, domestic use, and to support fish and wildlife; • water to support almost 32,432 acres of irrigated farm land; • protections for existing non-Indian irrigators within the Upper Peoples Creek Basin; • access to water stored in two Federal reservoirs; • $240 million to rehabilitate, modernize, and expand BIA’s Fort Belknap Indian Irrigation Project neglected over more than a century, and to restore and develop irrigation systems; • $61 million to establish a Tribal Water Department and trust fund for O&M; • $169 million to support water related economic development on the Reservation; • $123 million to construct Reservation domestic water supplies and wastewater treatment; • $36 million non-Indian water user mitigation and implementation by the Secretary.

The Act will settle FBIC’s approximately $741 million in claims against the U.S. for a total of $629 million. The Act will also restore 58,553 acres of lands to FBIC through land transfers valued at about $50 million and which reduces the monetary compensation owed by the U.S. to FBIC. These land transfers will improve jurisdictional issues and promote better management of forested lands. Almost half of these lands are already leased by FBIC for agricultural purposes. Annually, very few hunters are estimated to use the lands that would be restored to FBIC. State Tribal Relations Committee June 24, 2020 FBIC Water Settlement Exhibit 3