[Water_news] 5. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: AGENCIES, PROGRAMS, PEOPLE - 4/10/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 10, 2007

 

5. Agencies, Programs, People

 

 Canal-lining project can proceed, court says; Work near border now expected to resume by June - San Diego Union Tribune

 

Courts give long-discussed canal lining go-ahead - North County Times

 

 

Canal-lining project can proceed, court says; Work near border now expected to resume by June

San Diego Union Tribune – 4/10/07

By Sandra Dibble, staff writer

 

The lining of the All-American Canal, a long-planned water conservation project on the Mexican border designed to increase San Diego County's supply, is set to move forward after a seven-month delay, following a federal appellate court's ruling.

 

By early June, the San Diego County Water Authority expects contractors to resume their work on the controversial project, which has been strongly opposed in Mexico and by environmental groups. The authority and the Imperial Irrigation District, or IID, which operates the canal, are hoping to complete the project by April 2010.

 

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Friday lifted an emergency injunction that had kept the project on hold since August. The court also dismissed an appeal by a Mexican business group and two California environmental groups opposed to the project.

 

“It is the IID's intention to move forward, based on the court ruling on Friday,” spokesman Kevin Kelley said yesterday.

 

The lining project, which involves replacing a porous stretch of the canal with a 23-mile concrete-lined segment, is seen as critical to a federally mandated agreement ordering California to reduce its draw on the Colorado River.

 

The savings would bring an additional 67,700 acre-feet of Colorado River water to San Diego County each year, enough for about 134,000 families, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the canal.

 

The project's original price tag, $251.1 million, is now nearly $297 million because of the delay, according to the San Diego County Water Authority. The state of California is paying just more than half the total, or $153 million, but the San Diego County Water Authority has to make up the difference.

 

“We are proceeding,” Maureen Stapleton, the authority's general manager, said yesterday. “This has been an extremely expensive delay on a very significant project for California and the Colorado River basin states.”

 

The appellate court's ruling relied on legislation passed late last year by Congress ordering that the project be completed “without delay.” Buried in a last-minute tax bill, it ordered the U.S. secretary of interior to carry out the lining, which was first authorized by Congress in 1988.

 

Mexico has staunchly opposed the project, as farmers in the Mexicali Valley have long relied on the cross-border seepage from the 65-year-old canal to water their fields. Environmental groups have claimed the project would harm an important wetland in Mexico, as well as increase air pollution in Imperial County. Joining forces with two small California environmental groups, the Mexicali Economic Development Council filed suit against the project in U.S. federal court July 2005.

 

After a federal judge in Las Vegas dismissed the lawsuit, construction began last July. But the opponents of the project appealed to the 9th Circuit, which last August issued an emergency injunction halting the project while it considered the case.

 

Opposition to the project – both in and out of court – is likely to continue. In a statement issued yesterday, Mexican federal, state and municipal authorities vowed to join forces with the Mexicali development council in opposing the project, both legally and diplomatically.

 

“We're definitely going to continue this fight,” said William Snape, attorney for Citizens United for Resources and the Environment, one of the environmental groups. The group plans to appeal to the full 9th Circuit, and if that fails, to seek a review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

The case has been watched closely on both sides of the border. The Mexican federal government and state of Baja California both filed briefs opposing the lining project. But U.S. states and water districts along the Colorado River, anxious to see California reduce its draw on the river, have filed briefs supporting the lining.  #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20070410-9999-1n10canal.html

 

 

Courts give long-discussed canal lining go-ahead

North County Times – 4/10/07

By Gig Conaughton, staff writer

 

SAN FRANCISCO ---- A long-discussed Imperial Valley canal lining project expected to bring billions of gallons of water a year to San Diego County for the next century has the go-ahead to proceed after the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed an environmental challenge.

The same court in August stopped all work on the then $219 million, 23-mile-long project because Mexican businesses, farmers and California environmental groups said lining the canal would kill Mexicali farming and wetlands. The project is designed to help reduce the amount of water California takes from the Colorado River.

 

However, the court dismissed the injunction in a ruling dated Friday but released Monday morning, based upon the fact that Congress passed a law in December saying the project should proceed and the courts had no authority over the matter.

 

San Diego County Water Authority officials said they were pleased with the ruling and that they could start building June 1.

 

However, they also said that the delays had escalated the project's cost to $296 million, of which the state is paying $153.05 million.

The project, which could start delivering water by 2009, is expected to bring San Diego County residents enough water to sustain 154,000 households a year, every year for 110 years.

Lawyers representing the unusual coalition of Mexican business and California environmentalists could not be reached Monday by telephone for comment.

However, one lawyer wrote in an e-mail that they might try to appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"This case is no longer about water but about whether Congress can take away the environmental rights of a few Americans when powerful lobbyists pay them off," wrote Malissa McKeith, attorney for Citizens United for Resources and the Environment. "Anyone who opposes liquified natural gas, nuclear power, the Green Path or any other politically popular project should be alarmed ---- whatever they think of the All American Canal."

Water officials have been planning the canal lining project for nearly 20 years.

In 2003, it ---- and a similar canal-lining project in nearby Coachella Valley ---- became part of a complicated series of agreements among San Diego County, Imperial Valley, Coachella, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the state of California, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, and, indirectly, the six Western states that share the Colorado River.

The project would create a concrete-lined, 23-mile replacement section of the All American Canal. Water that seeps through the now earthen bed would be "conserved," reducing the amount of water that California takes from the Colorado River each year.

The 82-mile canal runs from northeast of Yuma, Ariz., down along the U.S.-Mexico border into Imperial County east of San Diego, delivering water from the Colorado River to the desert.

The water that would have percolated through the canal's earthen bed will now be shipped to San Diego County residents through Metropolitan Water District pipelines.

The coalition of Mexican businesses, farmers and California environmental groups went to court to stop the project because they said lining the canal would kill off groundwater supplies feeding Mexicali farmers, wetlands and endangered animals.

Dan Hentschke, the Water Authority's top lawyer, said Monday that the ruling was a good one.

"It's a good decision, obviously, for the U.S. and for San Diego, and for California," Hentschke said Monday. "This is the green light to go forward.

"I've know that (McKeith) has said they're going to 'take it all the way,'" Hentschke said of a possible continuation of the legal challenge. "But as far as I'm concerned, she has taken it all the way ---- and lost. Further appeal of this, in my opinion, would be a waste of their time and their money. But that's up to them."

Water officials, and even the environmental coalition, were surprised in August when the 9th Circuit Court issued the injunction and banned all further work on the project until it could revisit the issue.

Before that, a Superior Court judge ruled against the challenge twice in 2006.

Then, in December, Congress passed an omnibus bill containing several proposed laws ---- including a portion pushed by the Water Authority. That portion said the project was so important that it should be built "without delay."

The bill also said that Congress, not the courts, has sole authority to deal with international treaties and whether water seeping out of the All-American Canal belongs to Mexico or the United States.

The court ruling released Monday stated that the environmental challenges were rendered legally "moot" ---- meaning the issue no longer needed to be debated by the courts ---- because of the new law.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/10/news/top_stories/7_05_254_9_07.txt

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