Indian Programs

In the late 19th century, Congress began authorizing funds to build Indian irrigation projects. The goal was to spur economic development on Indian reservations and to meet federal legal obligations. Today, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) manages more than 70 projects that deliver water to about 1 million acres of reservation land. The Wapato Irrigation Project, located on the Yakama Indian Reservation in Washington State, irrigates about 142,000 acres. The cost to run the project, which BIA has designated as self-sustaining, is to be covered by annual assessments against all irrigable acres. The project has contributed substantially to the local economy, but, over the years, the project has fallen into disrepair, and many irrigated acres are idle. Estimates of the cost to bring the project back to operating condition range as high as $200 million. This report examines the (1) key reasons for the project's idle acreage and the steps that can be taken to return these lands to agricultural production, (2) main reasons why operation and maintenance assessments for the project are past due, and (3) obstacles that BIA will face in trying to collect the past due assessments.

GAO noted that: (1) BIA officials estimate that approximately 30,000 acres, or 21 percent of the project's acreage, are currently idle; (2) these lands are out of production for a variety of reasons, including changing farm economics and poor soil conditions; (3) in addition, BIA has not often exercised its authority to grant leases on behalf of Indian landowners who have not leased the lands themselves; (4) in 1996, BIA decided to exercise its authority to grant leases more often and began marketing the idle lands more extensively; (5) over the last decade, uncollected operation and maintenance assessments have accumulated to a total of $7.3 million, excluding interest, penalties, and fees; (6) BIA's practice of deferring the collection of operation and maintenance assessments for idle trust land is the main reason why assessments are past due; (7) deferred collections on idle trust land account for $5.5 million in past due assessments; (8) the remaining $1.8 million in past due assessments consists of delinquent payments from lessees of Indian trust land and from owners of nontrust land; (9) BIA has not aggressively attempted to recover any of the $7.3 million in past due assessments; (10) the biggest obstacle to the collection of past due assessments is BIA's belief that assessments on idle trust land are not justified; (11) moreover, because BIA has not collected past due assessments in a timely manner, federal and state statutes of limitations preclude the agency from using certain methods to collect the older assessments; (12) for example, the federal statute of limitations for using administrative offsets, such as deductions from federal income tax refunds, is 10 years; (13) when BIA has collected past due assessments through land sales, it has not, since August 1991, returned the funds to the project as required by law; (14) instead, it has deposited the funds in special accounts, anticipating that the past due assessments would eventually be cancelled and the funds could then be returned to the landowners; and (15) as of December 1996, the balance in the special accounts was about $103,000.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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