United States v. Alpine Land & Reservoir Co.

Churchill County appealed to a Nevada state court the decision of the Nevada State Engineer, R. Michael Turnipseed, granting a water rights transfer application to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. The United States District Court for the District of Nevada enjoined the state court proceeding because the state proceeding interfered with the district court’s exclusive jurisdiction to hear appeals regarding the water rights at issue, rights that had been originally adjudicated by the district court. Churchill County appeals, contending that the district court erred in issuing the injunction. We have jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 1291 , and we affirm.

I.

At the turn of this century, the Secretary of the Interior, acting pursuant to congressional authorization, withdrew from the public domain a large tract of land in western Nevada. This land became the Newlands Reclamation Project, a project diverting and storing water from the Truckee and Carson Rivers in a reservoir behind Lahontan Dam and distributing it downstream by means of canals for irrigation and related uses. See Nevada v. United States, 463 U.S. 110, 113-18 , 103 S.Ct. 2906 , 77 L.Ed.2d 509 (1983)…