[Water_news] Additional Articles for 12/2/2008

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

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

 

December 2, 2008

 

Further articles concerning the Delta lawsuit:

 

Activists sue to shut down Delta pumps

The Contra Costa Times

 

Lawsuit targets exports

Halt Delta water shipments, environmentalists contend

The Stockton Record

 

Eco groups ask judge to stop delta water flows

The Associated Press

 

New tack in old battle over California delta pumping

The Los Angeles Times

 

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Activists sue to shut down Delta pumps

The Contra Costa Times – 12/1/2008

By Mike Taugher

Reaching back to the laws of ancient Rome, environmentalists sued Monday to cut off Delta water operations and dramatically shake up the long-term balance between economic and environmental needs in the region.

 

If it succeeds, the lawsuit would shift the focus from the worsening conflict between individual species of fish and the amount of water pumped out of the Delta to a comprehensive attempt to balance competing interests.

 

"The only things that are already protected are already endangered," said Michael Jackson, a lawyer for the environmental groups. "But what's happening is the whole bottom is falling out of the ecosystem. You cannot list everything (as an endangered species) and you can't protect species by species."

 

By invoking the public trust doctrine, a legal concept that dates to the Roman Empire, the environmental groups seek to force regulators to consider the environment, recreation, aesthetics and other values to be passed to future generations in the Delta much more rigorously.

 

The lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, the California Water Impact Network and retired federal biologist Felix Smith, seeks to stop water deliveries from the Delta until the massive state and federal pumping stations near Tracy come into compliance with laws that the environmentalists say are being broken.

 

A spokesman for the state Department of Water Resources said the lawsuit could lead to "draconian" cuts in the East Bay and South Bay and threatens what little stability is left in the state's water supply outlook.

 

"It used to be that drought was determined by hydrology. Now, it is determined by hydrology and by regulatory and judicial constraints," said water resources department spokesman Ted Thomas. "This condition could toss us into the worst drought in California history very easily."

 

Water users have opposed application of the public trust doctrine in the Delta, and in October the State Water Resources Control Board rejected a petition from the environmental groups saying they planned to take actions over the next five years that would largely address the issue.

 

"We just don't think it (the Delta ecosystem) will last that long," Jackson said. "They don't want to do it and so we're going to try to force them."

 

In addition to the public trust doctrine, the lawsuit invokes clean water law, constitutional prohibitions against "unreasonable" uses of water and a law that requires dams be operated in a way that conserves fish.

 

It singles out the Westlands Water District as an unreasonable water user because one-quarter of the sprawling, 600,000-acre-district is on poorly drained soil that, when irrigated, can increase pollution into waterways that lead back to the Delta.

 

Westlands deputy general manager Jason Peltier accused environmentalists of unfairly focusing on Delta pumps as the culprit while ignoring invasive species, upstream pollution and other problems that might be driving the apparent collapse of the Delta ecosystem.

 

"Their fixation on the water projects over the last 20 years is probably one of the biggest reasons for the fisheries' decline," Peltier said.

 

The lawsuit is the latest variable to be thrown into a mix that appears to be making 2009 a pivotal year for decisions in the Delta.

 

Since 2000, water deliveries from the Delta have accelerated and fish populations have declined dramatically, though researchers say it remains unclear how much of the problem is because of Delta water pumping.

 

But the widespread decline has led some biologists to fear one fish, Delta smelt, is near extinction while the collapse of the fall-run chinook salmon population led to an unprecedented closure of the ocean salmon fishing season this year. There is precedent for use of the public trust doctrine in California water conflicts: In 1983, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state Water Resources Control Board had the authority and the duty to apply public trust values to Mono Lake, which has since been restored and widely hailed as an environmental success story.#

 

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_11115464?nclick_check=1

 

Lawsuit targets exports

Halt Delta water shipments, environmentalists contend

The Stockton Record – 12/2/2008

Record Staff Writer

 

SACRAMENTO - Water exports from the Delta should cease until government agencies comply with the law, environmentalists said Monday in a far-reaching lawsuit.

State and federal water managers have increased exports to farms and cities south of the Delta even as fish populations plummet, says the lawsuit, filed in Sacramento County Superior Court. Northern California reservoirs have been "cannibalized" for the sake of Southern California, and irrigation of drainage-impaired lands in the western San Joaquin Valley is a waste of water, the groups say.

 

The federal Bureau of Reclamation and state Department of Water Resources, both of which export Delta water, are targets of the lawsuit. So is the State Water Resources Control Board, which is charged with regulating water rights and ensuring water quality in California. The board has failed to provide important oversight, environmentalists say.

 

"It's clear that if the Delta, this estuary and its fisheries are to be saved, it will be under a court's jurisdiction," said Stockton-based Bill Jennings, whose California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is among several plaintiffs. "This may be the last, best chance for California fisheries."

 

A federal court has already restricted exports from the Delta to protect threatened smelt, and the state is enduring its second year of drought. That double-whammy has triggered water rationing from portions of the Bay Area to San Diego.

 

Ted Thomas, a spokesman for Water Resources, said the department was "disappointed once again that everyone focuses only on the pumps," just one factor in the decline of fish. Shutting down the pumps would be Draconian, Thomas said.

 

While the Delta is already a magnet for litigation, Jennings called Monday's lawsuit the "big banana." It makes a wide range of assertions:

» The export pumps near Tracy are the primary cause of the decline of fish, including smelt and salmon.

 

» The continued delivery of water to tainted farmland in the west Valley is in violation of the state constitution, which requires water be used reasonably.

 

» So much water has been taken from Northern California reservoirs, including New Melones Lake east of Stockton, that little cold water is left for fish below the dams.

 

» A plan requiring the doubling of chinook salmon has failed, with no consequences.

 

» Water quality flows on the San Joaquin River at Vernalis have not been met nor enforced.

 

Environmentalists asked the state water board for a formal hearing on the Delta earlier this year. The board declined, saying that a new strategic plan should in the next five years address water quality and water rights issues.

 

"These fisheries may not last another five years," Jennings said.

 

Water board spokesman Bill Rukeyser said he understands the worries of the environmental groups.

 

"But we are concerned that a hasty 'solution' could have unintended consequences," he said.

 

Shutting down the pumps would not be unprecedented. Jennings' group filed suit two years ago claiming the state never got a permit to accidentally kill fish at the pumps. An Alameda County Superior Court judge agreed and ordered exports to cease. The order was stayed pending appeal.

 

Later, in June 2007, the state temporarily shut down its pumps to protect smelt after large numbers were killed at the facility.#

 

http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081202/A_NEWS/812020324/-1/A_NEWS

 

Eco groups ask judge to stop delta water flows

The Associated Press – 12/1/2008

 

FRESNO, Calif. -- Environmentalists and sportfishermen asked a judge Monday to stop all water flows to farms and Southern California to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

 

The lawsuit filed in Sacramento County Superior Court claims the state is violating the public trust and the California constitution by allowing water from the delta to irrigate salty, contaminated croplands.

 

The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance and California Water Impact Network also allege pumping plants are endangering native fish populations. They asked the court to force state and federal water managers to turn their pumps off.

 

Stopping water deliveries could have disastrous economic consequences, said Ted Thomas, a spokesman for the Department of Water Resources.

 

Fiona Hutton, a spokeswoman for the State Water Contractors, which represents 29 water agencies, added that the lawsuit disregards long-term collaborations between environmental groups, state and federal fishery agencies, and other local organizations to restore the delta.

 

Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation did not immediately respond to requests for comment. #

 

http://www.sacbee.com/114/story/1440849.html

 

New tack in old battle over California delta pumping

The Los Angeles Times –  12/1/2008

By: Bettina Boxtail

 

Add another lawsuit to the seemingly endless legal battle over pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin delta, the troubled heart of California's water system.

In a complaint filed Monday in Sacramento County Superior court, two small but dogged environmental groups are taking aim not just at the pumping, but at agribusiness that uses water from the delta on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley.

 

The suit argues that irrigation of several hundred thousand acres of west-side land should cease because it violates the state's constitutional mandate that water be used in a beneficial manner. The land has a high water table and drains poorly, promoting the buildup of toxic elements such as selenium and boron that contaminate farm runoff and make their way into the San Joaquin River and eventually the delta.

 

The complaint, filed against state and federal agencies by the California Water Impact Network and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, also seeks to curb delta pumping to protect dwindling populations of several species of fish that swim in the delta.

 

Pumping has already been cut as a result of rulings filed in another environmental case dealing with the tiny delta smelt, which is found only in the delta and is nearing extinction.

 

Southern California water agencies say the cutbacks, coupled with a parched spring this year, may soon force them to ration water deliveries.#

 

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2008/12/new-tack-in-old.html

 

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