AquAlliance sued the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation again over their inadequate environmental review of the Bureau’s ‘temporary,’ North-to-South water transfers that take place year-after-year. While we lost the injunction that sought to halt the transfers,* AquAlliance and our litigation partner, the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA), achieved the major goal of the lawsuit: the ‘temporary’ water transfers will be folded into a larger plan that must disclose more fully how the communities, economy, and the environment in the NorthState and Delta may be harmed.
The Bureau started this process after AquAlliance sued it before in 2010 (” 10-year water grab moves forward“) but they shunted it aside over the last three years in favor of their ‘temporary’ annual transfers that were easier and allowed them to avoid comprehensive review of environmental impacts. This time, the Bureau had to declare under oath that it will issue a Draft Environmental Impact Statement for a 10-year transfer program in September of 2014. This is also affirmed on the Bureau of Reclamation website.
With this win in hand, AquAlliance must prepare for the analysis that will be necessary to defend this region from the 10-year, 600,000 acre-feet per year water transfer program. If that amount of water is transferred over 10 years, it is equivalent to what a city of 100,000 people would use in 200 years!!! Since the Bureau swore in court to stop the one-year, so-called ‘temporary’ transfers, we will dismiss the current lawsuit to turn all our resources and attention to the 10-year transfer program and Defending Northern California Waters with our attorneys and experts.
Background
If you want a reminder regarding who wants our water, here it is again.For decades, wealthy, politically connected water districts south of the Delta have wanted groundwater in the Tuscan Aquifer underneath Butte, Glenn, and Tehama counties. They have already destroyed the abundant natural bounty of South-state watersheds by irrigating marginal lands, transferring massive amounts of water, and excessive ground water pumping. Remember the Owens Valley and Mono Lake? If you follow the money behind this transfer project, you will find desert agriculture south of the Delta with junior water rights (i.e. last in line) pressing to abscond with more NorthState water for private profit.
The Bureau’s depiction of the 10-year, 600,000 acre-feet per year water transfer program is most accurately portrayed in the Federal Register Notice.
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*AquAlliance and CSPA hoped that we could stop the transfers with an injunction and expert analysis that illustrated that the small Delta smelt, that are on the verge of extinction, were going to be hammered by the transfers that would move them into hazardously warm water and toward the fish-eating export pumps. Unfortunately, Judge Lawrence O’Neill of the federal district court in Fresno denied the preliminary injunction to stop the federal 2014 water transfers from the Sacramento Valley. Courts routinely do this since they like to believe that the agencies are more expert than outside professionals. His deference to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will quite possibly bring the Delta smelt, the subject of the preliminary injunction, to extinction.