Ide v. United States

Background

This case is a lawsuit by the United States against nearby small landowners over changes the Government planned to make to Bitter Creek within the Shoshone reclamation project. The Government wanted to straighten, widen, and deepen the ravine so it could collect seepage from project irrigation and carry that water to other lands. Some purchasers bought tracts with patents that reserved rights of way and project water rights; others bought state school lands without water rights and later claimed they had appropriated water from the ravine after seepage began in 1908.

Reasoning

The Court considered four questions: whether the United States retained a reserved right of way to build ditches, whether the ravine held a natural stream that could be appropriated, whether the Government could recapture seepage from its irrigation, and whether any right had been abandoned. The Court read the statutory reservation to include ditches built after patenting, held that the patents and state law put buyers on notice, and found the ravine’s natural flow was intermittent and not practically usable. The Court concluded seepage is part of the water the Government lawfully took from the river and may be identified and reused, and it found no abandonment of that right.

Real world impact

The ruling lets federal reclamation authorities reshape natural gullies to capture and reuse irrigation seepage. People who buy small tracts in such projects take title subject to reserved federal rights, and local attempts to claim artificial seepage are displaced when federal project rights exist.