OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – The leaders of two American Indian tribes that have filed a federal lawsuit with the state and Oklahoma City over water rights in southeastern Oklahoma say the growing legal case was born out of frustration with state officials who they say ignored them while developing plans to transfer water out of their historic homelands.

Choctaw Nation Chief Greg Pyle and Chickasaw Nation Gov. Bill Anoatubby jointly issued a series of statements over the past week hoping to define for the public their goal for a lawsuit filed last August in U.S. District Court. The tribal leaders say they would rather negotiate a water rights agreement than litigate one.

“Our goal is to have our voice - and our rights - respected and included in any decision on proposals to remove waters from our homelands,” they wrote. “While we are confident we have strong legal claims, we want to make it clear that we have always preferred negotiation rather than litigation.”

In a separate statement, the tribal leaders suggested a plan to manage the region’s water resources that includes meeting the growing needs of urban centers like Oklahoma City and Tulsa while maintaining a sustainable supply in the region for recreation and tourism, agriculture and other rural uses and as a defense against drought. The tribes are currently working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop a regional water plan that meets those goals.

“The seven-point plan we have developed outlines the key points – the essentials, if you will – that any water management plan must address in order to ensure the continued sustainability of our water supply and prosperity of our great state,” Anoatubby says in the statement.

“The lawsuit filed against state officials and Oklahoma City was designed to ensure that our rights are taken into account in any future plan to remove additional water from our historic homelands,” Pyle states.

J.D. Strong, executive director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board, said the tribes’ public statements do not match the allegations and demands in their lawsuit.

“The Tribes talk about protecting the water needs of Oklahoma City, yet they asked a federal court to declare Oklahoma City has no right to use the pipeline that currently supplies its citizens with water,” Strong said. Among other demands, the lawsuit asks the court to declare that Oklahoma City has no right to transport water through the Atoka pipeline, which has delivered water to the city and other areas in central Oklahoma for almost 50 years.

“The State of Oklahoma has spent more than a century managing and regulating Oklahoma’s precious water resources with great success,” Strong said. “The State has long been, and intends to remain, the protector of all Oklahomans’ water rights.”

The tribes’ lawsuit asks a federal judge stop a plan approved by the resources board in 2010 to sell its water storage rights to Sardis Lake in southeastern Oklahoma to the Oklahoma City Water Utility Trust without first reaching an agreement with the tribes. The trust wants a water-use permit to withdraw water from the reservoir, which is within the historic territories of both tribes.

In exchange, the city agreed to pay the $22 million balance owed to the federal government for the lake’s construction in the 1970s and 1980s.

Pyle told The Associated Press the agreement followed years of unsuccessful attempts by the tribes to work with state officials to reach a water rights agreement that would benefit the state and the tribes.

“For over a decade, we made repeated attempts to establish productive government-to-government dialogue with the state on our shared water issues. But our efforts were never able to get the state to meaningfully engage,” Pyle said in an email.

The Choctaw Nation even offered to pay the balance on what was owed on the Sardis Lake project, but the board wouldn’t consider it, Pyle said.

“This, once again, made it clear the state would ignore our requests and our rights and our interests,” he said.

Anoatubby said the tribes want a seat at the table when plans for usage of water in southeastern Oklahoma are being developed by the state.

“We do have rights that must be recognized. And it’s my responsibility and Chief Pyle’s responsibility to make sure that our rights are protected as a nation,” Anoatubby told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“Water was something that we needed to settle,” he said. “We had talks with various people at the state level. However, there was never any acknowledgement of our rights.”

The tribes claim that an 1830 treaty gives them authority over water resources in their southeastern Oklahoma jurisdictions. State and city officials say the tribes relinquished those rights in subsequent treaties.

State officials have announced plans to file a separate lawsuit in state court to determine the extent of the tribes’ water rights in the region, something the tribes say could takes years to resolve and will not settle the water rights dispute.