Bismarck Tribune

By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN

LAKE SAKAKAWEA - North Dakota may be just days away from learning whether 36,000 acres around Lake Sakakawea will be transferred to the Three Affiliated Tribes.

All of the land is currently owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and some is leased for privately owned cabins and for public recreation areas. Most is leased for tribal grazing pasture.

The tribes said they want to recapture land taken 50 years ago for the flooding of Garrison Dam. If the corps does make the transfer, it will deed the land to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be held in trust for the reservation.

Tribal Chairman Tex Hall made an official request last year with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to get back land that the corps no longer needs to operate or maintain the dam. The corps held meetings to get public opinion and said it would release what it called an "effects" report earlier this fall.

Now, the report will get its final vetting Friday by the assistant secretary for the Army of Public Works, said corps project manager Larry Janis.

Janis said he wouldn't disclose any recommendations in the draft because everything could change, depending on the secretary's take on the matter.

If the assistant secretary likes the draft, it could be available within the week.

After being shared with state and tribal officials, it will be posted on the corps Web site and sent to public libraries in North Dakota.

Janis said the corps would take comments for another 30 to 60 days and hold another series of public meetings.

While the transfer is strongly endorsed by the tribes as a way to right a historical wrong, a number of nontribal residents have expressed concern about the idea, especially about access to the lake across tribal trust land.

The land is more or less continuous around the lake in varying widths.

The tribes has said it will honor existing leases that the corps has now, with such entities as McKenzie County, which has a $2.5 million recreation and cabin development on corps' land that would be transferred to the tribes, and the state Game and Fish Department, which has leases for several wildlife management areas that would be affected by the transfer.

The effects report is supposed to take into account how everyone would be affected if the transfer goes forward.

Gov. John Hoeven has been involved in the matter, but has not been able to get an early heads-up on how the report is leaning

Hoeven's assistant Lance Gaebe said Hoeven leaned pretty hard on the corps Col. Jeff Bedey when he recently visited the state, but wasn't able to get any information.

Gaebe said if he "had to guess," he'd guess the corps will split the baby, so to speak, and approve some land for transfer on a "small scale, pilot basis."

Janis said the effects report took so long in part because of the sheer volume of public comments.

He said comments by McLean County State's Attorney Ladd Erickson were a good example of some of the complexities involved.

Erickson was the first public official to call for the corps to hold public hearings, rather than simply make an agency-to-agency transfer, which it could have done.

Erickson posed a number of legal questions, including how public entities could enforce leases on the transferred land, given tribal sovereign immunity.

(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@;westriv.com.)