[Water_news] 1. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS - Top Item for 5/8/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment

 

May 8, 2007

 

1.  Top Item

 

State gets more time to comply with environmental laws -

Sacramento Bee

 

Water agency appeals pumping ruling -

Contra Costa times

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State gets more time to comply with environmental laws

Sacramento Bee – 5/7/07

The Associated Press

 

SACRAMENTO -- The state Department of Water Resources on Monday appealed a judge's decision that threatens to halt water from being pumped out of the delta.

The decision will give the state more time to secure the authority it needs to send water to millions of Californians, officials said.

 

The appeal stays an April 18 order by an Alameda County Superior Court judge, who ruled that the state's water pumps illegally kill chinook salmon and delta smelt. The ruling would have shut down the Harvey O. Banks pumping station near Tracy within 60 days.

 

The decision was a victory for environmentalists and sport fishermen, who argued that the pumping did not comply with state environmental laws that protect fish.

The 11 pumps west of Stockton are the heart of the State Water Project, funneling water at a rate of 10,688 cubic feet per second into the 444-mile long California Aqueduct. But the pumps also suck in and kill salmon and smelt, which are protected under the California Endangered Species Act.

 

Last month, the Department of Water Resources proposed getting permission from state wildlife officials to operate the pumps under federal authority. However, the federal guidelines also are being challenged in a separate lawsuit.

 

Department Director Lester Snow said the state will work with federal officials to craft new guidelines that meet both state and federal environmental laws, which could result in less water being pumped to Southern California. The new rules are expected to be completed by April.

 

"Our pumping patterns will probably be different after we're through this process than they are today," Snow said.

 

Environmentalists have long complained that the state sends too much water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and have blamed the pumping for declines in the chinook salmon and delta smelt populations.

 

Water pumped from the delta goes to more than 23 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland.#

http://www.sacbee.com/114/story/170945.html

 

Water agency appeals pumping ruling

Contra Costa times – 5/8/07

Mike Taugher, Staff Writer

 

The state Department of Water Resources announced late Monday it was dropping efforts to get an endorsement of the flawed federal permits that allow giant pumps near Tracy to pull water out of the Delta.

 

Instead, the agency Monday appealed a court order to comply with the state's endangered species law by mid-June and embarked on a lengthy process that is not expected to produce a legal permit before next April.

 

The announcement amounts to a rebuff to the district court judge who ordered the agency to comply with the California Endangered Species Act and an acknowledgment of the impossible situation that the water agency finds itself in.

 

For years, the agency has failed to obtain a state permit to kill protected fish such as Delta smelt and some salmon runs. The fish are killed when the massive pumps pull trillions of gallons of water a year out of the ecologically sensitive waterway for use on Central Valley farms and for 25 million Californians from the East Bay down to Southern California.

 

Now, with a 60-day clock running down to get either permits from state regulators or a regulatory endorsement of federal endangered species permits, the agency has found that it cannot do either.

 

New state permits would take too long to prepare, and the federal permits are flawed.

 

Nevertheless, state water officials until recently were trying to get an endorsement of the federal permits.

 

But those permits face an uncertain future. They are being rewritten, and last month a federal judge in Fresno hinted he was likely to rule in favor of environmentalists seeking to overturn one of them.

 

"That discussion (about the direction the federal judge was headed) leads to additional uncertainty on how we should proceed," water resources department Director Lester Snow said.

 

State officials noted that when they appealed, they got an automatic stay of the lower court's order and bought time.

 

They also noted that the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, which brought the lawsuit, filed papers agreeing not to fight the stay.

 

But the alliance's executive director, Bill Jennings, said his group has no alternative because the law makes the granting of a stay automatic.

 

"I think they're continuing in a state of denial as fisheries come closer to extinction," Jennings said. "It's not surprising. They've not come to the realization that significant modifications to the pumping regime is going to have to happen if we're going to save these fish."#

http://www.contracostatimes.com/politics/ci_5844802