Groups challenge Central Valley water contracts

SAN FRANCISCO
November 30, 2009 12:27pm

Conservation groups have appealed a decision to keep long-term water delivery contracts in California’s Central Valley that they say would result in years of damage to devastated salmon and other native fisheries, and fail to protect and restore California’s largest estuary, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay.

The appeal was filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit by conservation groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the San Francisco Baykeeper, represented in court by Earthjustice and NRDC.

The groups charge that the contracts, based on a 2005 Biological Opinion on the delta smelt that has been thrown out by a federal court, violate the Endangered Species Act and must be renegotiated to reflect current science.

“These water contracts must be revised to reflect a reasonable level of water diversions, require sensible conservation measures, and protect the collapsing Delta if we are going to fix California's broken water system and restore healthy fish populations,” says Kate Poole, lead attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The long-term water contracts being challenged would lock in super water rights for the next 40 years to a group of farmers in the Sacramento Valley. These growers, primarily rice farmers, have received 100 percent of their water supplies in the last three years. They would be allowed to continue diverting more than 2.2 million acre-feet of water annually. Other contracts being challenged allow the diversion of over 300,000 acre-feet of water from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley growers for the next 25 years, without considering water shortages in light of the drought and Delta's ecosystem collapse.

“We're talking about agreements that hand over California’s real wealth, its water, for decades to some growers watering desert soils full of toxic minerals for a fraction of the real value of that water, all at taxpayer and urban water users’ expense,” says Earthjustice Attorney Trent Orr. “These contracts would be locked in for 25 years, and many for 40 years. As the climate changes and California becomes drier, these contracts based on Bush-Cheney political science will damage the Bay and Delta more and more each year.”

The 2005 delta smelt Biological Opinion at the center of the appeal is one of two such opinions covering Central Valley water policies that were prepared by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and National Marine Fisheries Service during the Bush administration. Conservation groups challenged the 2005 plan and won.

In 2007, a federal district court ruled that the plan drastically understated the potential damage the water diversions caused when they failed to leave enough water in the Delta to protect habitat and restore fish populations, including valuable Chinook salmon. However, the court did not require reconsideration of the long-term water delivery contracts signed under those flawed plans.

Comments on this story

waterwise 12/3/09 11:14 PM
Judge Wanger, on pp. 85-86 of his April 27, 2009 Decision in this case, concluded as follows: “More than forty-five years ago, the United States and the SRS Contractors accepted the directions of the Water Board and the United States Congress to bring certainty to, and to enable the long-term operation of, the CVP through their compromised contractual recognition of senior Sacramento River System water rights, rather than undergo a complex, years-long stream adjudication. After a more than one-year study of the history and extent of all parties’ SRS water rights, the parties settled on long-term water contracts to continue for a 40 year term and renewals thereafter, for fixed, contractually defined quantities, allocations, and places of use. This facilitated the continued operation of the CVP . . . This is not unfair, unjust, or against the public interest, because without the SRS Contractors’ contribution of their senior water rights to the CVP, the CVP Units served by the Sacramento River System could not exist or effectively function.” Plaintiffs in this appeal intentionally attempt to paint all contractors — whether water service contractors or water rights settlement contractors — with the same broad brush. Plaintiffs know better, but assume and hope that the greater public does not. It’s shameful.