GOP lawmaker squares off with USDA, tribes over farm bill land transfer

The decades-long battle over nearly 9,500 acres in Oklahoma is coming to a head in Washington, D.C.

Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) secured a farm bill provision that would block transfer of the land, which currently hosts a United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) research facility and sits atop sizable oil and gas reserves, “except as otherwise specifically authorized by law.”

The USDA facility that occupies part of Fort Reno is the Oklahoma and Central Plains Agricultural Research Center, previously Grazinglands Research Laboratory, which Lucas has called “one of the crown jewels of our nation’s agricultural research facilities.”

The provision could clear the runway to expand agricultural and climate research by removing the need to extend a transfer moratorium in future farm bills. But it has also raised alarm within the USDA and among leaders of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, which have vigorously pursued their contested claim to the lands dating back more than 150 years.

A USDA spokesperson told The Hill that Lucas’s provision is a “move that defies decades of effort by Tribes and hundreds of years of Tribal history.”

“The Department acknowledges that any transfer of land is complicated, but is committed to finding a long-term workable solution with the Tribe,” the USDA spokesperson said.

Cheyenne and Arapaho Gov. Reggie Wassana told The Hill that the last time he met with Lucas, in 2021, he “pled with him to support us.”

“When somebody introduces a bill that says land will not be returned, it doesn’t seem like there’s an effort to work with the tribes,” Wassana said.

There has been language preventing the land from being “conveyed or transferred in whole or in part” in every version of the farm bill, the massive legislative package governing food and agriculture programs passed by Congress every five years or so, since 2002.

Previous iterations of the provision have set an expiration date or extended that date by five, 10 and 15 years since the 2008 farm bill. But the latest language, tucked on page 547 of the nearly 1,000-page draft, strikes the time marker, meaning any move to transfer the land would have to go through Congress, closing off administrative avenues.

“It is a parochial issue specific to Oklahoma’s Third Congressional District therefore the Committee worked directly with former House Committee on Agriculture Chairman Lucas, who represents the facility, when drafting this provision,” Ben Goldey, communications director for House Agriculture Committee Chair Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), who released the draft text of the bill in May, told The Hill.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack also pushed back on “the notion that we should be restricted from” working with the tribes to advance a potential return during at the National Congress of American Indians in June.

“The current House version of the farm bill that passed through the Agricultural Committee basically contains a provision that would say, ‘Under no circumstances should you do this.’ We’re obviously going to have to push back hard on that notion, which I am prepared to do and, which in the context of this meeting, I’m doing right now by saying that’s not something that’s acceptable to us,” Vilsack said.

“There’s important research that’s being done [at the Oklahoma and Central Plains Agricultural Research Center] and we want to see that research continue,” Vilsack added. “Is there a way in which land can be restored and research continue? I think there probably is a way to do that, and I think we ought to be exploring that more quickly and more fully.”

Balancing research and the potential return of Fort Reno

The Oklahoma and Central Plains Agricultural Research Center conducts research programs and projects broken out into four research units: agroclimate and hydraulic engineering; livestock, forage and pasture management; peanuts and small grains; and the Southern Plains Climate Hub, which focuses on how to reduce climate-related agriculture production risks.

Lucas has pushed to expand that research, requesting $1.3 million in May to renovate parts of the facility.

“The center’s mission to improve crop and pasture-based livestock production systems is made possible by the large swath of pristine prairie that the center is located on. This allows for unique research into livestock systems and plant germplasms that occur throughout the region,” Lucas said in a statement The Hill by a spokesperson.

“The fact is, this type of research can only be done in El Reno and it benefits all communities in Oklahoma and across the Central Plains.”

Wassana said in an Aug. 1 letter to President Biden that if Fort Reno is returned to the tribes, they would lease part of it to USDA to continue research while they develop other portions.

The tribes have said they want to transform around 2,000 acres of the land into an entertainment venue that includes an amusement park, water park, campgrounds and prairie restoration.

They hired the Chicago-based real estate firm Hunden Partners to conduct an economic impact report, which found the development would create almost 3,000 jobs and generate approximately $1 billion per year in economic activity.

Wassana also told The Hill that the tribe would consider developing or exploring the underlying reserves, in part to mitigate potential losses from surrounding wells.

Approximately 35.1 million barrels of recoverable oil and more than 475,000 million cubic feet of gas sit beneath Fort Reno, according to John Paul “J.P.” Dick, president and petroleum engineer at Pinnacle Energy Services, who was hired by the tribes to assess the reserves and the potential income they might generate.

“Total generated cash flow from the potential royalties, taxes, leasing bonuses, and surface revenues potentially exceeds [$1.65 billion] depending on oil and gas pricing,” Dick estimated in his reserve report.

Several company wells ring Fort Reno, but Dick told The Hill that while “there is a potential for some possible drainage” from the surrounding wells, “I don’t think there’s a great deal of drainage that’s occurring.”

Tribes ask Biden to return land

The Biden administration’s policy toward returning tribal lands offers an opportune moment for the tribes’ long-running effort to reclaim Fort Reno.

In November 2021, Vilsack and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland issued a joint secretarial order recognizing “the policy of the United States to restore Tribal homelands to Tribal ownership” and vowing to “facilitate Tribal requests to have lands placed into trust status,” when the Interior secretary acquires and holds the title to the land for the benefit of a tribe or an individual member.

The land-into-trust process is typically either directed by Congress or brought administratively by the Interior secretary, according to a 2021 report prepared by the Congressional Research Service, which told The Hill the report is being updated.

Wassana wrote in his letter to Biden this month that “for the Tribes to acquire legal title to the lands of Fort Reno without Congressional action, several interagency hurdles need to be cleared due to the now decades long rider appearing in successive Farm Bills.”

Going further, Wassana pushed for Fort Reno to be declared “excess” and returned to the tribes if the farm bill — and the current provision — expires Sept. 30.

The House has not yet voted on the draft bill, and the Senate Agriculture Committee has not yet released its draft of the farm bill, which means there may be another continuing resolution like the one passed last November that specifically extended the land transfer provision to Sept. 30, 2024.

As the USDA spokesperson acknowledged, the question of the tribes’ claim to Fort Reno is complicated and has been hotly debated for decades.

While Lucas has moved to permanently shift any future land transfer into the purview of Congress, his spokesperson did not respond to inquiries from The Hill asking whether the congressman believes the question of the tribes’ claim to the land was settled.

The dispute dates back to 1869, when President Grant issued an executive order designating more than 5 million acres in Oklahoma to the tribes.

In 1883, President Arthur signed his own executive order carving out 9,493 acres “for the post of Fort Reno,” which would be used “for military purposes exclusively,” failing to specify what would happen to the land after it served its military purpose.

Congress transferred 1,000 acres to the Justice Department in 1937 to be used by the Bureau of Prisons and the rest in 1948 to the USDA for “livestock and agricultural purposes.” In 1954, the land was placed on military “standby status.”

With the land no longer used for military purposes, the tribes have pushed for the return of Fort Reno. But the path has not been smooth.

Tribe officials donated more than $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee –— which later returned the donations — after then-President Clinton told a tribe leader “we can help you” at a 1996 donor luncheon, the Associated Press reported, and sent him a cigar store wooden Indian in 1999 to remind him of his promise, as told by Politico.

But Clinton left office without transferring the land to the tribes, which filed a lawsuit in 2006 that argued their “reversionary interest” in Fort Reno vested when it stopped being used for military purposes decades earlier.

The U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C., dismissed the tribes’ suit in 2007, ruling the 12-year statute of limitations in the Quiet Title Act — which lets landowners challenge government intrusion on their land — has lapsed.

The opinion also included a footnote that “alternatively concludes” that as a result of a 1965 settlement, the tribes had lost “all rights, claims or demands … with respect to the [Fort Reno lands]” and were “barred thereby from asserting any such right, claim or demand against defendant in any future action.”

The tribes had agreed to a $15 million settlement in 1965 in exchange for their claim to the land, years after it filed a claim with the Indian Claims Commission (ICC) in 1958 alleging they had been severely shortchanged by a 1891 agreement to “cede, convey, transfer, relinquish, and surrender forever and absolutely” their claim to the land for $1.5 million.

But the tribes claim they were never compensated, calling into question the settlement.

In 1999, a Department of Interior solicitor named John Leshy issued a memorandum that concluded “the Tribes have credible arguments they did not cede the lands in 1891, were not compensated for the lands, and accordingly have an equitable claim for the return of the lands to their possession,” although it would ultimately be up to the USDA to determine whether the Fort Reno acreage was excess that could be returned.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to requests for comment to affirm the position, and Leshy declined to comment.

In 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. also threw out the lower court’s footnote that stated the tribes lost their claim because of the 1965 settlement, leaving the question open.

“We do not reach the court’s alternative conclusion that the 1965 settlement of the Tribes’ ICC suit also bars their present action,” the court order said, referring to the dismissed quiet title suit.

As the farm bill deadline draws closer, pressure has mounted on the USDA as the tribe pushes for the return of the disputed land before Lucas’s provision potentially cuts off the administrative path to do so.

While Vilsack has expressed a desire to pursue some sort of compromise, if and how the agency chooses to act remains to be seen.