Pyramid Lake Paiute v. Nevada State Engineers

I. Background

The underlying case arises from a 1944 federal court decree quieting title to certain water rights in the Truckee River. The PYRAMID LAKE PAIUTE TRIBE v. CHURCHILL COUNTY 2337 Truckee River originates in California, flows into Nevada, and terminates in Pyramid Lake, the principal natural feature of the Pyramid Lake Reservation. Acting under authority granted to it by the Reclamation Act of 1902, 32 Stat. § 388, the federal government established the Newlands Reclamation Project to divert water for irrigation from the Truckee and Carson Rivers. Because private landowners and the Indians of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation possessed pre-existing water rights in the rivers, in 1913 the United States sued in federal district court to quiet title to all water rights in the project area. More than thirty years later, the federal district court in Nevada entered its final decree adjudicating water rights in the Truckee Division of the project. United States v. Orr Water Ditch Co., Equity No. A-3 (D. Nev. 1944). Known as the Orr Ditch Decree, this decree allows parties to change the “place, means, manner or purpose of use of the waters to which [the party is] so…