30.01.040 Declaration of Policies

It is the policy of the Tribe to:

(a) Preserve and protect in perpetuity the quantity and quality of tribal water resources and to exercise the self-determination of the Tribe through the use, administration, protection and management of tribal water resources.

(b) Develop a reservation-wide program for the control of the quality of all the waters of the Tribe; that the Tribe must be prepared to exercise its full power and jurisdiction to protect the quality of waters of the Tribe from degradation originating inside or outside the boundaries of the Tribe and that the reservation-wide program will be most effectively managed locally within the framework of reservation-wide coordination and policy.

(c) Ensure that all tribal members and our future generations have clean water.

(d) Protect tribal water from any actions injurious to the quantity, quality or integrity of the water.

(e) Ensure the long-term planning and investment of the Tribe enables the delivery and use of water to individual water users.

(f) Manage surface water resources according to watershed and sub-watershed best management practices, executed by the Tribal Water Resource Commission, with regard to interactions with alluvial and non-alluvial ground water systems.

(g) Manage ground water resources according to aquifer system safe yield principles and consider base flow conservation as the standard against to measure groundwater sustainability.

(h) In general, the sustainable yield of an aquifer must be considerably less than recharge if adequate amounts of water are to be available to sustain both the quantity and quality of streams, springs, wetlands, and ground-water-dependent ecosystems. To ensure sustainability, it is imperative that water limits be established based on hydrologic principles of mass balance.

(i) Control activities and initiation of processes in watersheds (e.g. soil erosion) or ground water systems (e.g. inter-aquifer leakage) tending to degrade the water resource.

(j) Encourage a holistic approach to conservation, water reuse, storage, recharge, exchanges, transfers, and wastewater treatment strategies.

(k) Protect traditional, religious and cultural uses of water resources and other resources dependent upon water.

(l) Keep water local and encourage off-reservation municipalities to address issues from a holistic watershed perspective.