Appeals court upholds tribes’ claim in dispute over Gila River water
by Ben Moffat | Cronkite News
A federal appeals court Tuesday agreed with two tribes who challenged a Freeport Minerals plan to divert water from the Gila River, saying the company had failed to show that its proposal would not affect the tribes.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the company, now Freeport-McMoRan, did not meet its burden of proving that the plan to reroute water would not have substantial negative effects on those downstream, which included the Gila River Indian Community and the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
The plans in question were the remaining handful of hundreds filed in the 1990s to “sever and transfer” water rights under a 1935 consent decree that controls allocation and use of water from the Gila River.
