The Tule River Indian Tribe's plans for storing water on the reservation, which propose a dam on the South Fork of the Tule River, have support of the Porterville City Council. Water-storage plans are proceeding alongside negotiations to fix the extent of the tribe's federally reserved rights in the South Fork. A congressional appropriation of $2.3 million will be necessary to fund remaining water-rights negotiations involving the tribe, the Tule River Association and the South Tule Independent Ditch company - and to fund a feasibility study for a reservoir.
"While the quantification of many tribal water rights involves litigation with almost every stakeholder in the watershed, the tribe, STIDC and TRA have successfully negotiated many of these issues without having to resort to litigation," Tribal Chairman Neil Peyron wrote to the city.
The tribe recently asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein and U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes to help Congress appropriate the $2.3 million.
"This appropriations request will enable us to complete these negotiations and initial feasibility studies," Peyron wrote to Porterville.
Under a settlement agreement, it's still confidential what amount of water the tribe could pursue storing, said Alec Garfield, chairman of the tribal negotiation team. Likewise, no plans for a dam are yet on the drawing board, he said.
The three parties have settled a dispute over who holds water rights, but have yet to arrive at a precise amount agreed to belong to the tribe, Garfield said. Negotiations began in the late 1990s, with quarterly meetings among the parties sometimes making little progress, he said.

"There's federally reserved water, and we're trying to quantify the water, to divide it fairly," Garfield said.

Billions of gallons of water per year are involved.

According to Tule River Association water master Dick Schafer, the average yearly runoff in the South Fork of the Tule is 34,000 acre-feet of water, enough to flood 34,000 acres a foot deep. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons.

City Council members April 19 voted to petition Feinstein, a Democrat, and Nunes, a Republican, to help make the appropriation the parties are requesting.
"The parties including the tribe, the South Tule Independent Ditch Company and the Tule River Association have worked to a resolution of this most difficult issue," states the council's letter to the legislators. "Their efforts should be supported through the federal appropriation."

Garfield said the South Fork water situation is addressed, but not adequately clarified, in a decades-old federal agreement dealing with tribes' access to water.
"The issue was an agreement put together in 1922, two years before American Indians became citizens," Garfield said.

Contact Roger Phelps at 784-5000, Ext. 1047, or rphelps@portervillerecorder.com
This story was published in The Porterville Recorder on April 26 , 2005