Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/466/765/
Timestamp: 2019-10-18 19:21:14
Document Index: 445960018

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 8', '§ 797', '§ 4', '§ 791', '§ 15', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 8', '§ 797', '§ 4', '§ 797', '§ 53', '§ 4', '§ 23', '§ 817', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 4', '§ 803', '§ 4', '§ 8', '§ 8', '§ 797', '§ 4', '§ 8251', '§ 4', '§ 8']

Escondido Water Co. v. La Jolla Indians :: 466 U.S. 765 (1984) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
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Escondido Water Co. v. La Jolla Indians, 466 U.S. 765 (1984)
1. The plain command of § 4(e) of the FPA requires the Commission to accept without modification conditions that the Secretary deems necessary for the adequate protection and utilization of the reservations. Nothing in the legislative history or statutory scheme is inconsistent with this plain command. Pp. 466 U. S. 772-779.
2. But the Commission must make its "no inconsistency or interference" findings and include the Secretary's conditions in the license only with respect to projects located "within" the geographical boundaries of a federal reservation. It is clear that Congress concluded that reservations were not entitled to the protection of § 4(e)'s proviso unless some of the licensed works were actually within the reservation. Thus, the Court of Appeals erred in holding that the Commission's § 4(e) obligation to accept the Secretary's conditions and to make such findings applied to the three reservations on which no licensed facilities were located. Pp. 466 U. S. 780-78.
3. Section 8 of the MIRA does not require licensees to obtain respondents' consent before they operate licensed facilities located on reservation lands. While § 8 gave respondents authority to determine whether to grant rights-of-way for water projects, that authority did not include the power to override Congress' subsequent decision in enacting the FPA that all lands, including tribal land, could, upon compliance with the FPA, be utilized to facilitate licensed hydroelectric projects. Pp. 466 U. S. 784-787.
Section 4(e) of the Federal Power Act (FPA), 41 Stat. 1066, as amended, 16 U.S.C. § 797(e), authorizes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (Commission) [Footnote 1] to issue licenses for the construction, operation and maintenance of hydroelectric project works located on the public lands and reservations of the United States, including lands held in trust for Indians. The conditions upon which such licenses may issue are contained in § 4(e) and other provisions of the FPA. The present case involves a dispute among the Commission, the Secretary of the Interior (Secretary), and several Bands of the Mission Indians over the role each is to play in determining what conditions an applicant must meet in order to obtain a license to utilize hydroelectric facilities located on or near six Mission Indian Reservations.
Jolla, Rincon, and Pala Bands of Mission Indians. The reservations of the Pauma, Yuima, [Footnote 2] and three-quarters of the reservation of the San Pasqual Bands of Mission Indians are within the river's watershed. These six Indian reservations were permanently established pursuant to the Mission Indian Relief Act of 1891 (MIRA), ch. 65, 26 Stat. 712.
Since 1895, petitioner Escondido Mutual Water Co. (Mutual) and its predecessor in interest have diverted water out of the San Luis Rey River for municipal uses in and around the cities of Vista and Escondido. The point of diversion is located within the La Jolla Reservation, upstream from the other reservations. Mutual conveys the water from the diversion point to Lake Wohlford, an artificial storage facility, by means of the Escondido canal, which crosses parts of the La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual Reservations. [Footnote 3]
16 U.S.C. § 791a et seq.), Mutual applied to the Commission for a license covering its two hydroelectric facilities. In 1924, the Commission issued a 50-year license covering the Escondido diversion dam and canal, Lake Wohlford, and the Rincon and Bear Valley powerhouses.
The present dispute began when the 1924 license was about to expire. In 1971, Mutual and the city of Escondido filed an application with the Commission for a new license. In 1972, the Secretary requested that the Commission recommend federal takeover of the project after the original license expired. [Footnote 4] Later that year, the La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual Bands, acting pursuant to § 15(b) of the FPA, [Footnote 5] applied for a nonpower license under the supervision of Interior, to take effect when the original license expired. The Pauma and Pala Bands eventually joined in this application.
After lengthy hearings on the competing applications, [Footnote 6] an Administrative Law Judge concluded that the project was not subject to the Commission's licensing jurisdiction, because
the power aspects of the project were insignificant in comparison to the project's primary purpose -- conveying water for domestic and irrigation consumption. 6 FERC � 63,008 (1977). [Footnote 7] The Commission, however, reversed that decision and granted a new 30-year license to Mutual, Escondido, and the Vista Irrigation District, which had been using the canal for some time to convey water pumped from Lake Henshaw, a lake located some nine miles above Mutual's diversion dam. 6 FERC � 61,189 (1979).
In its licensing decision, the Commission made three rulings that are the focal point of this case. First, the Commission ruled that § 4(e) of the FPA did not require it to accept without modification conditions which the Secretary deemed necessary for the adequate protection and utilization of the reservations. [Footnote 8] Accordingly, despite the Secretary's insistence, the Commission refused to prohibit the licensees from interfering with the Bands' use of a specified quantity of water, id. at 61,415, and n. 146, or to require that water pumped from a particular groundwater basin [Footnote 9] not be transported through the licensed facilities without the written consent of the five Bands, id. at 61,145, and n. 147. Other conditions proposed by the Secretary were similarly rejected or modified. See id. at 61,414-61,417. Second,
"preclude any possible interference or inconsistency of the power license . . . with the purpose for which the La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual reservations were created, [Footnote 10]"
On appeal, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reversed each of these three rulings. Escondido Mutual Water Co. v. FERC, 692 F.2d 1223, amended, 701 F.2d 826 (1983). The court held that § 4(e) requires the Commission to accept without modification any license conditions recommended by the Secretary, subject to subsequent judicial review of the propriety of the conditions, that the Commission is required to satisfy its § 4(e) obligations with respect to all six of the reservations affected by the project, and not just the three through which the canal passes, and that § 8 of the MIRA requires the licensees to obtain right-of-way permits from the La Jolla, Rincon, and San Pasqual Bands before using the licensed facilities located on the reservations. [Footnote 11]
Mutual, Escondido, and Vista filed the present petition for certiorari, which we granted, 464 U.S. 913 (1983), challenging all three of the Court of Appeals' rulings. [Footnote 12] We address each in turn.
16 U.S.C. § 797(e). The mandatory nature of the language chosen by Congress appears to require that the Commission include the Secretary's conditions in the license even if it disagrees with them. Nonetheless, petitioners [Footnote 13] argue that an examination of the statutory scheme and legislative history of the Act shows that Congress could not have meant what it said. We disagree.
North Dakota v. United States, 460 U. S. 300, 460 U. S. 312 (1983) (quoting Consumer Product Safety Comm'n v. GTE Sylvania, Inc., 447 U. S. 102, 447 U. S. 108 (1980)). Congress' apparent desire that the Secretary's conditions "shall" be included in the license must therefore be given effect unless there are clear expressions of legislative intent to the contrary.
Petitioners initially focus on the purpose of the legislation that became the relevant portion of the FPA. In 1920, Congress passed the Federal Water Power Act in order to eliminate the inefficiency and confusion caused by the "piecemeal, restrictive, negative approach" to licensing prevailing under prior law. First Iowa Hydro-Electric Cooperative v. FPC, 328 U. S. 152, 328 U. S. 180 (1946). See H.R.Rep. No. 61, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 4-5 (1919). Prior to passage of the Act, the Secretaries of the Interior, War, and Agriculture each had authority to issue licenses for hydroelectric projects on lands under his respective jurisdiction. The Act centralized that authority by creating a Commission, consisting of the three Secretaries, [Footnote 14] vested with exclusive authority to issue licenses. Petitioners contend that Congress could not have intended to empower the Secretary to require that conditions be included in the license over the objection of the Commission, because that would frustrate the purpose of centralizing licensing procedures.
Congress was no doubt interested in centralizing federal licensing authority into one agency, but it is clear that it did not intend to relieve the Secretaries of all responsibility for ensuring that reservations under their respective supervision were adequately protected. In a memorandum explaining the administration bill, the relevant portion of which was enacted without substantive change, [Footnote 15] O. C. Merrill, one of the chief draftsmen of the Act and later the first Commission Secretary, explained that creation of the Commission
"I can see no special reason why the matter might not be handled safely under the provisions of the proposed measure, which requires that developments on Government reservations may not proceed except with the approval of the three heads of departments -- the commission -- with such safeguards as the head of the department immediately charged with the reservation may deem wise."
"[W]hen an application is made for a license to construct a dam within an Indian reservation, the matter goes before the commission, which consists of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Interior, and the Secretary of Agriculture. They all agree that it is in the public interest that the license should be granted, or a majority of them so agree. Furthermore, the head of the department must agree; that is to say, the Secretary of the Interior in the case of an Indian reservation must agree that the license shall be issued."
"shall . . . contain such conditions as the Secretary . . . shall deem necessary for the adequate protection and utilization of such reservations. [Footnote 16] "
Petitioners next argue that a literal reading of the conditioning proviso of § 4(e) cannot be squared with other portions of the statutory scheme. In particular, they note that the same proviso that grants the Secretary the authority to qualify the license with the conditions he deems necessary also provides that the Commission must determine that "the license will not interfere or be inconsistent with the purpose for which such reservation was created or acquired." 16 U.S.C. § 797(e). Requiring the Commission to include the Secretary's conditions in the license over its objection, petitioners maintain, is inconsistent with granting the Commission the power to determine that no interference or inconsistency will result from issuance of the license, because it will allow the Secretary to "veto" the decision reached by the Commission. Congress could not have intended to "paralyze with one hand what it sought to promote with the other,'" American Paper Institute, Inc. v. American
Electric Power Service Corp., 461 U. S. 402, 461 U. S. 421 (1983) (quoting Clark v. Uebersee Finanz-Korporation, A.G., 332 U. S. 480, 332 U. S. 489 (1947)), petitioners contend.
This argument is unpersuasive, because it assumes the very question to be decided. All parties agree that there are limits on the types of conditions that the Secretary can require to be included in the license: [Footnote 17] the Secretary has no power to veto the Commission's decision to issue a license, and hence the conditions he insists upon must be reasonably related to the protection of the reservation and its people. [Footnote 18] The real question is whether the Commission is empowered to decide when the Secretary's conditions exceed the permissible limits. Petitioners' argument assumes that the Commission has the authority to make that decision. However, the statutory language and legislative history conclusively indicate that it does not; the Commission "shall" include in the license the conditions the Secretary deems necessary. It is then up to the courts of appeals to determine whether the conditions are valid. [Footnote 19]
in a position to grant deference to the Commission's findings and conclusions because those findings and conclusions will not be included in the license. However, that is apparently exactly what Congress intended. If the Secretary concludes that the conditions are necessary to protect the reservation, the Commission is required to adopt them as its own, and the court is obligated to sustain them if they are reasonably related to that goal, otherwise consistent with the FPA, and supported by substantial evidence. [Footnote 20] The fact that, in reality, it is the Secretary's, and not the Commission's, judgment to which the court is giving deference is not surprising, since the statute directs the Secretary, and not the Commission, to decide what conditions are necessary for the adequate protection of the reservation. [Footnote 21] There is nothing in the statute
or the review scheme to indicate that Congress wanted the Commission to second-guess the Secretary on this matter. [Footnote 22]
Since the Commission failed to comply with this statutory command when it issued the license in this case, the Court of Appeals correctly reversed its decision in this respect. [Footnote 23]
There is no doubt that "reservations" include "interests in lands owned by the United States" [Footnote 24] and that, for many purposes, water rights are considered to be interests in lands. See 1 R. Clark, Waters and Water Rights § 53.1 p. 345 (1967). But it does not follow that Congress intended the "reservations" spoken of in § 4(e) to include water rights. [Footnote 25] The section deals with project works to be located "upon" and "within" a reservation. As the Court of Appeals itself indicated, the section does tend to "paint a geographical picture in the mind of the reader," 692 F.2d at 1236, and we find the
the licensed facilities is actually located on the reservation. They rely in particular on § 23(b), which provides that project works can be constructed without a license on nonnavigable waters over which Congress has jurisdiction under its Commerce Clause powers only if, among other things, [Footnote 26] "no public lands or reservations are affected." 16 U.S.C. § 817. Respondents argue that it would make no sense to conclude that Congress intended to require the Commission to exercise its licensing jurisdiction when a reservation is "affected" by such a project if it did not also intend to afford those reservations all of the protections outlined in § 4(e). However, that is exactly the conclusion that the language of § 4(e) compels, and, contrary to respondents' argument, there is nothing illogical about such a scheme.
Even if the Commission is not required to comply with all of the requirements of § 4(e) when it issues such a license, it is still required to shape the license so that the project is best adapted, among other things, for the improvement and utilization of water power development and for "other beneficial public uses, including recreational purposes." 16 U.S.C. § 803(a). In complying with that duty, the Commission is clearly entitled to consider how the project will affect any federal reservations and to require the licensee to structure the project so as to avoid any undue injury to those reservations. See Udall v. FPC, 387 U. S. 428, 387 U. S. 450 (1967). As noted supra at 466 U. S. 782, the Commission can even require that, as a condition of the license, the licensee surrender some of its water rights in order to protect such reservations if the Commission determines that such action would be in the public interest. However, it is clear that Congress concluded that reservations were not entitled to the added protection provided by the proviso of § 4(e) unless some of the licensed works were actually within the reservation.
"Subsequent to the issuance of any tribal patent, [Footnote 27] or of any individual trust patent . . any citizen of the United States, firm, or corporation may contract with the tribe,
In essence, § 8 increased the Bands' authority over its land, so that they had almost the same rights as other private landowners. [Footnote 28] The Bands were authorized to negotiate with any
private party wishing to acquire rights-of-way and to enter into any agreement with those parties, something they were previously unable to do. And until some overriding authority was invoked, the Bands, like private landowners, had complete discretion whether to grant rights-of-way for hydroelectric project facilities. However, there is no indication that, once Congress exercised its sovereign authority to use the land for such purposes, the Bands were to have more power to stop such action than would a private landowner in the same situation -- both are required to permit such use upon payment of just compensation. [Footnote 29] Therefore, the only question is whether Congress decided to exercise that authority with respect to Indian lands when it enacted the FPA. The answer to that inquiry was clearly articulated in a somewhat different context more than 20 years ago.
FPC v. Tuscarora Indian Nation, 362 U. S. 99, 362 U. S. 118 (1960).
In short, while § 8 of the MIRA gave the Bands extensive authority to determine whether to grant rights-of-way for water projects, that authority did not include the power to override Congress' subsequent decision that all lands, including tribal lands, could, upon compliance with the provisions of the FPA, be utilized to facilitate licensed hydroelectric projects. Under the FPA, the Secretary, with the duty to safeguard reservations, may condition, but may not veto, the issuance of a license for project works on an Indian reservation. We cannot believe that Congress nevertheless intended to leave a veto power with the concerned tribe or tribes. The Commission need not, therefore, seek the Bands' permission before it exercises its licensing authority with respect to their lands. [Footnote 30]
Investigation of Federal Regulation of Power: Hearings pursuant to S.Res. 80 and S. 3619 before the Senate Committee on Interstate Commerce, 71st Cong., 2d Sess., 358 (1930). This snippet of post-enactment history does not help petitioners' cause at all. All parties agree that the Commission has the authority to make a finding that "the license will not interfere or be inconsistent with the purpose for which such reservation was created or acquired." 16 U.S.C. § 797(e) (emphasis added). This is separate from the Secretary's authority to condition the license for the adequate protection and utilization of the reservation. Lawson's statement was clearly concerned with the former. Indeed, a contemporaneous memorandum by the Commission's legal staff (of which Lawson was the head), stated that the Secretary of the Interior had authority under what is now § 4(e) "to prescribe conditions to be inserted in the license for the protection and utilization of the reservation.'" Brief for Secretary of the Interior 33, quoting Memorandum of Sept. 20, 1929, p. 23. It may well be that, in a particular case, the conditions suggested by the Secretary will unduly undermine the Commission's licensing judgment. However, as noted infra at 466 U. S. 777, and n.19, that is a determination the court of appeals is to make.
6 FERC � 61,189, p. 61,411 (1979). The licensees did not object to this conclusion in their petition for rehearing to the Commission, and they may not challenge it now. 16 U.S.C. § 8251(b). Accordingly, we have no reason to decide whether § 4(e) applies to relicensing proceedings.
The Bands suggest that, even in the absence of § 8 of the MIRA, their consent would be necessary before the license could issue because of their sovereign power to prevent the use of their lands without their consent. Brief for Respondents La Jolla Band of Mission Indians et al. 37-39. However, it is highly questionable whether the Bands have inherent authority to prevent a federal agency from carrying out its statutory responsibility, since such authority would seem to be inconsistent with their status. See Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, 435 U. S. 191, 435 U. S. 208-209 (1978). In any event, it is clear that all aspects of Indian sovereignty are subject to defeasance by Congress, United States v. Wheeler, 43 U. S. 313, 44 U. S. 323 (1978), and, from the legislative history of the FPA, supra, at 466 U. S. 787, that Congress intended to permit the Commission to issue licenses without the consent of the tribes involved.
Oral Argument - March 26, 1984