Opinion ID: 2995309
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: F.R. sec. 131.8, including the

Text: necessary demonstration of its inherent authority over all water resources on the reservation. In keeping with its earlier positions, the EPA noted that the inherent authority question did not turn on who had title to the land underneath the waters. This grant of TAS status alarmed the State of Wisconsin, which saw it as both an affront to the state’s sovereignty and, more pragmatically, as an action with the potential to throw a wrench into the state’s planned construction of a huge zinc-copper sulfide mine on the Wolf River, upstream from Rice Lake. Concerned about its loss of authority over certain territory within its outer boundaries and worried that the tribal water standards might limit the activities of the mine by prohibiting some or all of the discharge from the mine, Wisconsin filed this action in district court on January 25, 1996, reiterating its challenge to the EPA’s grant of TAS status to the Band. (The United States and the EPA waived immunity under 5 U.S.C. sec. 702.) The state’s case raises a fundamental challenge to the TAS grant; the relief it seeks is outright revocation of the grant, rather than mere accommodation for any particular project. We are therefore satisfied that the issue is ripe now and need not await the Band’s promulgation of specific water quality standards. If Wisconsin is right, it is entitled to have the EPA’s creation of a state-like entity within its borders voided--an action that lies within the power of the court. See Community Trend Service, Inc. v. Commodity Futures Trading Comm’n, 233 F.3d 981 (7th Cir. 2000). Similarly, it is one in which a failure to review the issue now would cause hardship to the parties. Id. In April 1999, the district court upheld the TAS grant, finding that the EPA’s determination that a tribe could regulate all water within the reservation, regardless of ownership, was a reasonable interpretation of the relevant statutes and regulations. Wisconsin now appeals.