Opponents of Central California’s Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians’ plans to expand its Chumash Casino Resort are trying to use water rights dating back to 1897 as a weapon.
The tribe is spending $170 million on an expansion with a 12-story hotel tower. It has also purchased 1,400 additional acres for housing.
Local landowners have gone to court, citing a judgment from an 1897 lawsuit that, they say, will prevent the tribe from using local water that comes from a creek.
The landowners say that if the tribe is allowed to expand its casino resort that it will spoil this wine country community that often attracts Hollywood stars. The tribe counters that its opponents represent a small minority of the community who would like to drive the tribe out of the valley altogether.
Tribal Chairman Vincent Armenta told Bloomberg Business, “As far as Santa Ynez being a nice place, we’re aware of that. We’ve been here well before the town was even being developed, and before the movie stars came.”
The casino has 2,000 slots and over 40 gaming tables. Says Armenta, “We’ve been successful. In the last 14 years, we’ve built the business from what would be considered a very small business to a multibillion-dollar enterprise, including other properties off-site, hotels, restaurants, gas stations, commercial property, rentals in different states.”
A local rancher who has lived in the valley for 60 years, Nancy Crawford-Hall, told Bloomberg, “You’re being asked to approve of the wholesale destruction of lives and livelihoods,” and calls the hotel the “height of arrogance.”
California, which is currently in the midst of the worse drought in its history, recently sent a letter to the tribe, decrying the casino’s increased use of water, an additional 36,000 gallons a day. The tribe has said it will address those concerns as it renegotiates its gaming compact with the state.
Save the Valley LLC, which is the group that filed the lawsuit, is outraged that the tribe isn’t subject to state or local environmental regulations. A spokesman told Bloomberg, “Every time we’ve raised one of those issues, the answer is ‘Yes, we’re violating, we understand that, we know that’s the law. But the land is in trust for the Santa Ynez Band of Mission Indians, so therefore we don’t have to follow the law.”
Sovereign immunity has in the past prevented the group from suing. But the group did some historical research and found that the land where the creek runs through was never transferred to the tribe as part of its formal reservation.
The lawsuit judgment from that era limited the water use by the Indians to irrigation and domestic use. That forms the basis for Save the Valley’s lawsuit. The case is now in the hands of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The tribe argues that it is still protected by sovereign immunity. A judge is considering whether Save the Valley will be able to reopen the lawsuit.
