United States v. Alpine Land & Reservoir Co.

In 1859, the United States set aside almost 500,000 acres in Nevada as a reservation for the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians (“the Tribe”). The central feature of the reservation, the ancestral home of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, is Pyramid Lake. In 1902, Congress passed the Reclamation Act of June 17, 1902, (“the Reclamation Act”) and withdrew approximately 250,000 acres in western Nevada from public use in 1903; this land became part of the Newlands Reclamation Project (“the Project”). 32 Stat. 388 , 43 U.S.C. §§ 372 et seq. The Project was intended to convert some of the country’s most arid land into irrigated farmland, diverting water from the Carson River and the Truckee River, which is the principal source of water for Pyramid Lake. The diversion allowed farmers and ranchers to convert arid land into irrigated and fertile land, reduced the surface area of Pyramid Lake, threatened the survival of various indigenous fish and the health of the Lake’s ecosystem, and spawned years of contentious litigation that continues in the case before us today.

In the 1980s, landowners holding water rights in the Project submitted transfer applications to the Nevada State…