United States v. Clifford Matley Family Trust

Opinion by Judge PAEZ; Partial Concurrence and Partial Dissent by Judge SNEED.

This appeal involves another aspect of the many disputes over rights to water from the Newlands Reclamation Project (the “Project”) in western Nevada. Appellants United States and Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe of Indians (the “Tribe”) appeal the district court’s order affirming a ruling by the court-appointed Water Master to reclassify farm land located in the Project from “bottom land” to “bench land” for water allocation purposes. Although the Appellants raise several procedural issues, the heart of their challenge to the district court’s order centers on the legal standard adopted by the court in 1994 when it authorized the Water Master to reclassify Project farm land from “bottom” to “bench” on the basis of a reduction in crop yield. We reject the procedural challenges to the Water Master’s ruling, but conclude that the district court adopted an incorrect legal standard for evaluating a petition to reclassify project land. As we explain, the Water Master may approve a reclassification petition only when there has been a reasonably significant loss in crop yield. To apply the standard adopted by the…

Concurring and Dissenting:

Although I agree with the majority’s conclusions regarding- the procedural issues, I disagree with its resolution concerning the legal standard adopted by the district court authorizing the Water Master to reclassify farm land from “bottom” to “bench” on the basis of a -reduction in crop yield. Instead of adopting a standard that, while different from the district court’s, conflicts with the system of reclassifying farm lands set forth by the Department of the Interior (“DOI”), I suggest that the case should be remanded to the district court to conduct the review — that it was already ordered to perform and failed to properly conduct — of the DOI’s system.

The task assigned to the district court in 1989 was to determine whether the DOI had acted arbitrarily or capriciously when it promulgated its Operating Criteria and Procedures (“OCAP”). See United States v. Alpine Land and Reservoir Co., 887 F.2d 207, 214 (9th Cir.1989). The OCAP prescribes not only a method for initially classifying Project lands, but also includes the explicit instruction that “[w]hen the Federal Watermaster considers changing any portion of the initial map, the specific criteria…