Grant County Black Sands Irrigation District v. United States Bureau of Reclamation

BRYSON, Circuit Judge.

I

In 1937, Congress authorized a multipurpose reclamation project known as the Columbia Basin project, which was designed to irrigate farmland in central Washington with water drawn from the Columbia River. Over time, water that seeped into the ground from the surface irrigation created significant quantities of artificially stored groundwater in the Quincy Basin area. The Washington Department of Ecology began managing the Quincy Basin groundwater in 1973 but later accepted the federal government’s claim to ownership of that water. See Flint v. United States, 906 F.2d…