A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
September 28, 2007
1. Top Item
Water Users To Sue Power Plants Over Troubled Delta Fish - KCRA Channel 3 (
Water users to sue power plants over troubled delta fish - Associated Press
Coalition plans to sue government, power firm to save delta smelt - San Francisco Chronicle
Water Users To Sue Power Plants Over Troubled Delta Fish
KCRA Channel 3 (
The four water districts allege that Mirant Corp's
The smelt's decline triggered a recent federal court decision expected to limit the amount of water available from the delta for people and farmers.
The water districts say the power plants' pumps suck in thousands of fish and raise the water temperature.
A spokeswoman for Mirant isn't immediately commenting. #
http://www.kcra.com/news/14224403/detail.html
Water users to sue power plants over troubled delta fish
Associated Press – 9/27/07
By Don Thompson, Associated Press – 9/27/07
SACRAMENTO—A coalition of water users filed a notice Thursday stating its intent to file a lawsuit alleging that power plants are harming fish in the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
The four water districts allege that Mirant Corp.'s natural gas-fired power plants in
The smelt's decline triggered a recent federal court decision that was expected to limit the amount of water available from the delta for people and farmers, including those served by the Belridge, Berrenda Mesa, Lost Hills, and Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa water districts.
The plaintiffs say that Mirant's power plants pump more than a billion gallons of water a day from the delta to cool steam turbines. The process not only kills tens of thousands of fish that get sucked into the pumps, but harms their habitat by returning warmer water to the delta, says the 11-page notice sent by
Filing the notice is the first required step to actually bringing suit against the government.
The coalition cites reports by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Public Policy Institute of California, a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization, that the pumps potentially kill so many fish that they are contributing to declining smelt populations.
Mirant corporate spokeswoman Felicia Joy Browder said in an e-mail that she could not immediately comment.
The coalition said it also intends to sue the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for authorizing Mirant's killing of rare species. A spokesman for the Corps said he couldn't comment.
Experts previously estimated that keeping fish out of the pumps could be expensive. One fish screening device costs $7 million to purchase and $600,000 annually to maintain.
The coalition acknowledged that the power plants are just some of the potential causes of the smelt's decline. Invasive species, pollution, and other unscreened water pumps have also been identified as problems.
None of those problems will be resolved by merely limiting water pumping from the delta for the federal and state water projects that feed farms and communities, Michael Boccadoro, spokesman for the Coalition for a Sustainable Delta, said in a news release announcing the legal notice. #
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_7019942
Coalition plans to sue government, power firm to save delta smelt
San Francisco Chronicle – 9/28/07
By Peter Firmite, staff writer
Angered by a decision to cut water allocations to save the delta smelt, a group of officials representing agricultural water agencies announced plans Thursday to sue the government, a power generation plant and maybe others they contend are responsible for the demise of the fish.
The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta filed a notice of intent to sue Mirant Delta LLC and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for violating the Endangered Species Act.
The coalition claims Mirant's Contra Costa and
"Until we improve the delta smelt situation, we are going to continue to see cutbacks in the state and federal pumping operations," said Michael Boccadoro, the coalition's spokesman. "We don't think that will solve the problem, because we don't think the pumping operations are the primary cause."
Representatives of Mirant and the Army Corps could not be reached for comment.
The filing comes after a recent federal court decision to cut by up to a third the amount of water drawn from the delta for farm irrigation and drinking water. The ruling, by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, was an attempt to help the delta smelt, a tiny fish once plentiful but now facing extinction.
Environmentalists insist the huge Tracy-area pumps used by the State Water Project and federal Central Valley Project suck up smelt, killing huge numbers of them. Those water systems redistribute delta water to parts of the Bay Area, the
The accusation against Mirant is the first in what Boccadoro said could be a series of lawsuits against businesses, government agencies and individuals responsible for storm-water runoff, invasive species like striped bass, and unregulated diversions of water that the coalition believes are at least as responsible for killing the smelt.
"The only way to bring these other factors into the equation is to focus the same kind of scrutiny on them," Boccadoro said.
"Our worst nightmare is that we'll dramatically cut back the water and the smelt numbers will continue to decline and then they'll go back and say, 'Well, we didn't cut back enough.' " #
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/28/BAOASFMVE.DTL
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