2.2.15 – FriantWaterline.org: While the U.S. Supreme Court was deciding to let stand an appeals court ruling on one endangered species, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal handed another blow to valley agriculture and other beneficial water uses.

It reinstated a 2009 Biological Opinion regulating the Central Valley Project and State Water Project based on the impacts their operations have on endangered salmonids, including several types of salmon, steelhead, and green sturgeon that migrate through the Delta.
The opinion also considers the effects of Project operations on a small population of orca whales in the ocean that prey on salmon.
A three-judge 9th Circuit panel in December reversed a 2010 Fresno U.S. District Court decision, made by then Judge Oliver Wanger. Wanger had ruled that the government lacked scientific basis for its Biological Opinion regulating Delta export pumping.
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) concluded in 2009 that the federal CVP and nearby SWP pumps near Byron and Tracy were killing too many endangered juvenile salmon.
The panel ruled unanimously in its 80-page decision that Wanger should have deferred to NMFS, a Commerce Department agency, and its expertise.
Earlier in 2014, a 9th Circuit panel overturned Wanger’s ruling in a Delta smelt case. The December decision, according to one of the justices, was “almost entirely controlled” by the findings in the Delta smelt case.

‘SO DO FISH’

“If the governments did not extract water from the Central Valley’s rivers, the valley could not support the farms that feed, the dams that power, and the canals that hydrate millions of Americans,” Justice Richard Tallman wrote. “But by extracting the water, people dramatically alter the rivers’ natural state and threaten the viability of the species that depend on them. People need water, but so do fish.”
“This case is about the competing demands for these limited water resources,” Tallman added. Tallman wrote that NMFS “used the best scientific data available, even if that science was not always perfect.” On that basis, the 9th Circuit upheld the Biological Opinion.