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40-year land dispute settled: Deal centers on Indian trust land |
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Friday, 22 May 2009 |
By EMILY HONE
The Morning News
BLACKFOOT — A land dispute that has been simmering for more than 40 years moved a step closer to resolution Thursday when a group of residents who acquired Indian trust land along the Blackfoot River and lost some of their own when the river was realigned in 1964 agreed to a settlement.
Jeanette Wolfley, special counsel for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, said the group of landowners signed the paper agreeing, with a few minor changes in wording, to have the Idaho Congressional Delegation introduce legislation that will settle the concerns of both sides.
The meeting included non-Indian owners of fee land on the north bank of the river, representatives from the Tribes and Bureau of Indian Affairs, and an attorney for Blackfoot River Flood Control District No. 7.
The inadvertent land exchange occurred when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was asked to do a flood control project on the river at the lower end of Blackfoot where flooding often occurred during years of heavy snowpack .
Since the river is the northern boundary of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation and property on the reservation was being flooded also, the Tribes' governing body, the Fort Hall Business Council, enacted a resolution agreeing to the work.
The Corps widened and deepened the river, installed riprapping and berms, and replaced irrigation structures and diversions.
But the agency also straightened out a few of the river's curves believed to be obstructing its flow. Since the reservation boundary followed the natural curve of the river, the straightening changed the line in some places, leaving loops of trust land on the north side and loops of fee land on the reservation.
The problem came to the forefront at the beginning of the Snake River Basin Water Adjucation when employees of the Tribes noted that some of the land on which the non-Indians had filed for water rights was trust land belonging to reservation residents.
That fact was confirmed when the Bureau of Land Management completed a survey of the river in 2004 from the Equalizing Reservoir east of Blackfoot to the point where it enters the Snake River near Tilden Bridge. Both sides have been working since then for a solution.
Although the fee land owners said during a meeting in 2007 the matter could be settled by agreeing to make a trade of the land that went to the south side of the river for land that came to the north side, they were informed by Wolfley that wasn't possible because some of the trust land was owned by the Tribes, requiring an act of Congress for a swap.
Debbie Ho from Washington, D.C., said at Thursday's meeting she and Wilson Pipestem were hired by the Tribes to lobby the Idaho Congressional Delegation to support the settlement. Ho said they had met with the delegation, and they're willing to introduce the legislation once agreement by all parties is reached.
Ho said she got the impression from Sen. Mike Crapo that some of the stakeholders did not agree with the terms of the proposed settlement legislation, and he wanted the signatures of all concerned on both sides before proceeding.
She said the Business Council and the individual landowners on the reservation have all agreed.
T.J. Budge, attorney for the flood district, said Crapo has not said that anyone is opposed to the plan, but just wants to be assured that all questions from the landowners regarding the process have been asked and answered and that everyone is in agreement before the legislation is introduced in Congress.
Under terms of the agreement, the legislation would extinguish all claims to the land as they existed before realignment of the river. The land on the south side of the river that was once fee land will be placed into trust for its owners by the federal govrnment, and the land on the north side that was once Indian-owned will have its trust status removed and have fee patents issued on it.
The former trust land will be transferred to the flood control district, which will then convey it to its new non-Indian landowners.
According to the agreement, landowners on both sides, including the Tribes, will be reimbursed for loss of use of their land due to a mistake made by a federal government agency.
The money due non-Indian landowners will go to the flood control district to distribute to them, and that due individual Indian landowners will be placed in their Individual Indian Money Accounts in the U.S. Treasury. The reimbursement for tribally owned land will be placed in a Tribal Trust Account to be used only for construction of such things as a natural resources building, water resources needs, economic development and land acquisition or other projects that benefit the Tribes as a whole.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 May 2009 )
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