OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – A state water board on Tuesday authorized its legal counsel to begin the process of filing suits to determine water rights in southeastern Oklahoma in a move that two tribal leaders warn could launch a “generational fight” over water in the state.

In response to a lawsuit filed against the state by the Chickasaw and Choctaw tribes, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board voted to authorize its counsel to begin the process of adjudicating all the rights to the use of water in the Kiamichi River and Muddy Boggy stream systems.

While such adjudication proceedings are relatively common in many western states, OWRB spokesman Brian Vance said the move is “largely unprecedented in Oklahoma, certainly to this degree.”

Diane Clay, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office said the board's decision puts the state in a position to respond to legal action initiated by the tribes.

“In response to the lawsuit, the Attorney General's Office and the state must take action to protect the water rights of all Oklahomans against claims made by tribes in the lawsuit,” Clay said in a statement.

The Choctaw and Chickasaw tribes filed a lawsuit against the state in August seeking an injunction barring the state and Oklahoma City from transporting new supplies of water from the tribes' historic territories in southeastern Oklahoma to Oklahoma City. In its original petition, the tribe asked a federal judge to stop the OWRB from selling its water storage rights to Sardis Lake to the Oklahoma City Water Utility Trust without first reaching an agreement with the tribe.

The tribes amended their petition last month, alleging the state, the city and the OWRB do not have the right to use the Oklahoma-based tribes' land for any purpose, “including as a site for existing or additional pipelines or any other structures used to export water from the treaty territory to Oklahoma City.”

In a joint letter to The Associated Press, Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby and Choctaw Nation Principle Chief Greg Pyle warned that the state's move to begin adjudication proceedings will “condemn Oklahomans to a generational fight that pits neighbor against neighbor and community against community on a scale that this state has never seen before.”

“Unlike the carefully structured suit that the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations filed, Oklahoman's lawsuit will proceed against thousands of individual Oklahomans, seeking to force each and every one of them to retain a lawyer and proceed to court to prove up whatever right to water they think they have or their neighbors don't have,” the two leaders wrote.

“We condemn such unwise course of conduct in the strongest of terms.”

Vance, the OWRB spokesman, said the agency plans to release more information on the adjudication process in the coming days. But in response to the tribal leaders' warning that the process would lead to a generational battle over water rights, he said: “I can tell you that's not the case.”

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Sean Murphy can be reached at www.twitter.com/apseanmurphy