Tribe gains water rights and $500M, but surrenders litigation claims in 10-year settlement gamble
H.R. 5935 — Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians Water Rights Settlement Act · Filed by Ken Calvert (R-CA) · 1 cosponsor · Introduced Nov 7, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill approves a water rights settlement for the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians in California's Indio Subbasin. It confirms the Tribe's right to 20,000 acre-feet per year of groundwater, establishes a $500 million trust fund for water infrastructure and management, transfers approximately 2,982 acres of federal land into the Tribe's reservation, and requires the Tribe to waive past water rights claims in exchange for these benefits and protections against future water-related damages.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core function is to settle a tribal water rights dispute through statutory ratification of a negotiated agreement, quantification of water entitlements, and establishment of a trust fund for infrastructure—a standard Indian water settlement mechanism.
What the text implies
- Waiver of all past water rights claims by the Tribe and US trustee (section 9) is broad and permanent; Tribe retains only enforcement rights under the agreement itself and environmental/natural resource claims, creating asymmetry in future dispute resolution.
- Allottees must exhaust tribal remedies before suing US (section 5(h)(4)), shifting dispute resolution to tribal courts and potentially limiting federal accountability for water allocation disputes.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who stands to gain
Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians (water rights, land, $500M trust fund); Allottees within the Tribe (water allocations, trust protections); Water infrastructure contractors (construction funded from Development Projects Account)