## Facts

- Congress passed three key statutes affecting New Mexico’s school trust lands: the Organic Act of 1850, the Ferguson Act of 1898, and the Enabling Act of 1910, which granted lands to the State to be held in trust for schools and other public institutions and administered by the Commissioner of Public Lands.
- Under the 1850 Organic Act, certain sections were promised for the benefit of schools, but the United States later used or set aside some of the promised lands for other federal purposes, leading to later substitutions.
- The 1898 Ferguson Act addressed shortfalls by authorizing substitute lands and also provided for grants of land for “reservoirs for irrigation,” without stating that the school trust lands themselves carried an attached water right or that water was reserved to irrigate those school sections.
- The 1910 Enabling Act granted additional school trust lands as New Mexico approached statehood. Congress recognized that much of the granted land was arid and therefore of low value; it responded by granting extra acreage rather than by expressly reserving water for the land.
- In 1975, the State Engineer began a general stream-system adjudication of water rights in the Lower Rio Grande. The adjudication area included nearly 300,000 acres of state school trust lands.
- In 2004, the Commissioner filed a declaration in the adjudication asserting that, because the lands were granted by Congress for school-support purposes, they carried implied federal reserved water rights sufficient to meet the grants’ purposes.
- The State Engineer disputed that claim and sought summary judgment, arguing the federal land-grant statutes did not create federal reserved water rights for school trust lands and that any water rights must be obtained under New Mexico law.
- The district court granted summary judgment for the State Engineer, holding that no federal reserved water rights attached to the school trust lands under the federal grant statutes. The Commissioner appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether the Organic Act of 1850, the Ferguson Act of 1898, or the Enabling Act of 1910 implicitly created federal reserved water rights appurtenant to New Mexico’s school trust lands.
2. Whether congressional grants of land to a state “in trust” for schools should be treated as a federal “reservation” that can carry implied reserved water rights under the doctrine associated with *Winters*.
3. Whether the Ferguson Act’s reference to lands for “reservoirs for irrigation” shows congressional intent to reserve water for the school trust lands.

## Decision

- The New Mexico Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s summary judgment for the State Engineer.
- The court held that the federal land-grant statutes did not reserve, expressly or by implication, federal water rights for New Mexico’s school trust lands.
- The Commissioner could not assert federal reserved water rights for those lands in the Lower Rio Grande adjudication; any water rights for the trust lands must arise under New Mexico water law.

## Legal Principles

- Federal reserved water rights arise when the United States withdraws land from the public domain and reserves it for a federal purpose, with an implied reservation of unappropriated water only to the extent needed to accomplish the reservation’s primary purposes.
- A congressional conveyance of land to a state for management as trust property to fund schools is not, without more, the kind of federal land reservation that triggers the reserved-rights doctrine.
- Courts do not infer a reserved water right from statutory silence or from general statements of public benefit; there must be a clear indication that reserving water was intended and necessary to carry out the federal purpose.
- Where Congress addressed the aridity and low value of school trust lands by granting additional acreage, that legislative choice cuts against implying that Congress also meant to reserve water to make those lands productive.
- Statutory authorization to grant lands for irrigation reservoirs does not, by itself, establish an implied reservation of water for separate categories of school trust lands.
- In the absence of a federal reservation of water, state-law systems of water appropriation and administration govern how water may be acquired and used on state trust lands.

## Conclusion

The Court of Appeals held that New Mexico’s school trust lands—granted under the Organic Act of 1850, the Ferguson Act of 1898, and the Enabling Act of 1910—did not come with implied federal reserved water rights because Congress conveyed the lands to the State rather than reserving them as federal reservations and because the statutes did not show a clear intent to reserve water; as a result, the Commissioner must rely on New Mexico water law, not federal implied reserved rights, to establish any water rights for those lands.


State of New Mexico ex rel. State Engineer v. Commissioner of Public Lands, 200 P.3d 86 (2008)