Water districts file suit over cutbacks; say further environmental damages may result from water reductions

From the Fresno County Farm Bureau:

Westlands Water District and 29 public water agencies have filed a lawsuit aimed at the federal government’s latest plan for cutting back even further on California’s water supplies. The suit argues the National Marine Fisheries Service should have prepared an environmental impact statement before adopting a salmon recovery plan that will divert hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of California’s freshwater supplies into the ocean.

“Denying this much water to California is going to do obvious, serious and enduring damage to habitat, to wetlands, and to other endangered species. It will reduce the opportunities for recycling, conjunctive use, and water transfers, which are all vitally important to the state’s efforts to conserve water and improve efficiency. And it will put tens of thousands of people out of work, which affects public health and safety in myriad ways,” said Westlands’ Tom Birmingham.

The U.S.District Court for the Eastern District of California recently granted a preliminary injunction in connection with a similar lawsuit that pointed to the failure of another federal agency, the Fish and Wildlife Service, to prepare an environmental assessment before imposing a set of restrictions on behalf of the Delta Smelt that cut California’s water supply by nearly one third. Hearings on the merits of those challenges will be conducted later this year.

The smelt cutbacks have cost California more than 660,000 acre feet of water last year and they have reduced water supplies by another 480,000 acre feet so far this year. The federal plan for salmon would continue all of those reductions and could take as much as another 500,000 acre feet of water out of the water system, according to the CA Department of Water Resources.