Residents, Ute tribe team against wetlands plan

MYTON, Duchesne County — A former member of the Ute Indian tribe governing body is urging tribal members to join a class-action lawsuit against a federal official as part of a strategy by both American Indians and non-Indians to block a federal swamp-building project near the town of Myton in Duchesne County.

"The feds are hiding behind the tribe because you can't sue the tribe in a federal or state court," said former business committee member Stewart Pike during a Thursday night mass meeting at the Myton Community Center. "But the superintendent has the power to overturn decisions of the (Tribal) Business Committee when they affect nontribal members. We need to look into the provisions and see if he has authority of review here, because he's a federal official, and we can sue him, whether we're Indians or not."

Last month the Tribal Business Committee declared its support for the Lower Duchesne River Wetlands Project, a plan suggested to the tribe by the Department of the Interior through its sub-agency, the Utah Conservation, Reclamation and Mitigation Commission.

Pike pointed out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs appoints a superintendent, often not an American Indian, to oversee each reservation in the U.S. Superintendents are among an extremely narrow number of federal officials who can intervene directly in tribal affairs, for instance to prevent abuses of tribal government that may violate a tribe's constitution. As a way of balancing tribal governments' sovereign power with the sovereign interests of the U.S., a superintendent has limited veto power over some decisions, Pike said.

During a meeting of more than 120 ranchers, area residents and tribal members living both in or near Myton, dozens stood to voice their objection to federal plans to seize more than 1,600 acres of private ranch land and forcibly buy another approximately 1,500 acres of land owned privately by tribe members, to be added to reservation land to form a 4,807-acre wetlands project.

Because the project would increase mosquito habitat and raise groundwater levels, Pike said it is a health hazard to American Indians and non-Indians alike, and therefore everyone in the 20-mile mosquito migration area could sue the superintendent for not stopping it from being built.

The wetlands plan, worked out with difficulty over the past 13 years, was vigorously opposed when first presented to the public in 2003. Since then the project has been scaled back, but the main features are unchanged. On May 22 the mitigation commission will meet in the Wallace F. Bennett Federal Building to hold a public hearing and then issue a record of decision.