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The Invasion of Indian Country in the Twentieth Century 198 political period of protecting water rights for their peoples. In eleven states, a total of ninety-seven irrigation projects were being developed , producing crops worth more than $178 million.32 During the early 1980s, sixty-eight percent of the groundwater in the country was used for agricultural irrigation, with approximately ninety percent of the irrigated lands existing in seventeen Western states. After eighty-five percent of the water consumed in the West went to irrigated croplands, the remaining fifteen percent was divided among domestic, municipal, and industrial uses. By 1990, more than four million hectares in the United States, an estimated fifth of the nation’s irrigated areas, were watered by excessively pumping recycled water. Using such amounts during the early 1980s dropped the lower water tables in Texas, California, Kansas, and Nebraska—four primary food-producing areas. In Texas, as an example, the water tables fell about fifteen centimeters (six inches) per year beneath 1.54 million hectares, or seventy-two percent of the state’s total irrigated area, amounting to a total of thirty percent of that land between 1974 and 1987.33 CERT has warned the tribes about future battles for retaining water rights, obtaining ownership, securing a needed supply of water, and getting funding for water programs. In 1982, CERT described the water situation as confused and stated that time and water were running out on the tribes. Intertribal cooperation was posed as one way to amass enough influential power to oppose the water interests of the federal and state governments, non-Indian agriculture, industries, and municipalities as their water needs increased. Although all Indian tribes legally had water rights, many did not actually possess water. Consequently, both ownership and possession were paramount in the formation of water policy. Throughout the twentieth century and certainly well before, as in the case of the Pueblos in the Southwest, Indian water rights have been abused and Indian water has been stolen. The diversion of streams around reservations frequently was authorized by federal authorities and state officials, who sometimes allowed non-Indians to siphon off reservation groundwater. Ironically, even as dry lands on reservations lay in dire need of water, the federal government subsidized non-Indian agricultural users. CERT claimed that the tribes lacked political power to overcome this exploitation and that they needed to be better informed about their water rights and resource management.34 In 1989, the U.S. Supreme Court began to reexamine Indian reserve water rights when it agreed to review a 1988 Wyoming Supreme Court decision. The decision had awarded extensive federal reserved water rights to the Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribes Environmental Issues and Tribal Leadership 199 on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, establishing that the tribes had 477,000 acre feet of water for agricultural purposes but none for industrial or municipal usage. The state of Wyoming and the tribes appealed the decision. The Supreme Court rejected the state's petition to deny the tribes any reserved water rights but agreed to review the quantification of those rights based on the "irrigable" standard .35 Water is the source for human life-and also the source of unfortunate conflict. Because the money involved is not as substantial as that represented in energy negotiations for oil and coal; water does not arouse immediate concern. Yet the war for water is approaching and isalready evident in some parts of the country. This precious natural resource is the most valued of all, for it is essential to everyone. The by-products of water, such as geothermal energy and hydroelectricity , are important as well, but they are secondary to human needs. Using water as a means of wielding power, the Warm Springs Confederated Tribes have developed the only Indian-owned hydroelectric project in the United States. The project was planned in June 1978, and the tribe received a grant of $86,000 from the Department of Energy for a feasibility study to develop the hydropower plant at the Pelton Reregulating Dam, built in the mid-1950s. The $30 million project, completed with $10 million in tribal funds, $15 million raised by a state bond issue, and a $5 million federal loan, is expected to produce annual net revenues of approximately $4 million to the Warm Springs Tribes.36 One innovative project is a wind generator belonging to the Muscogee Creeks in Oklahoma. The generator was designed to provide electricity for the tribal offices at Okmulgee with wind...

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