22 June 26, 2020 VOL.39 • ISS. 14
Lawsuit by three groups
challenges federal contracts
imperiling Delta, fish and wildlife
I
n the latest lawsuit to contest
federal water policies, three
environmental groups recently sued the
U.S. Bureau of Reclamation over the
granting of permanent federal water
contracts to water users supplied by the
Central Valley Project (CVP).
The lawsuit, brought by the Center for
Biological Diversity, Restore the Delta
and Planning and Conservation League,
challenges the Trump administration’s
moves to make permanent 14 existing
short-term Central Valley Project
contracts and ongoing work to convert
dozens of others to permanent contracts.
The Central Valley Project (CVP), one
of the world’s largest water storage and
delivery systems, includes 20 reservoirs,
about 500 miles of canals and
aqueducts and two pumping plants. The
CVP exports massive quantities of water
from the Delta to San Joaquin Valley
agribusiness interests.
In a statement, the groups said the
CVP “has caused widespread environmental
damage by reducing freshwater
flows in the San Francisco Bay-Delta,
blocking salmon migration and killing
wildlife with toxic runoff from irrigated
farmland.”
The groups filed the suit in federal
district court for the Eastern District of
California.
Such diversions “reduce freshwater
flows through the Delta causing and
worsening harmful algal blooms
(HABs) which threaten the public
health of those drinking, fishing in, or
swimming in, Delta waters, or inhaling
the air near Delta waters,” the complaint
states.
“Reclamation has converted Central
Valley Project water delivery contracts
to permanent contracts,” said Bob
Wright, attorney for the groups. “And,
they are doing so with absolutely
no National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) compliance whatsoever.
Reclamation contends they have no
discretion, even though they claim they
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are negotiating the contracts, and the
law they rely on says the ‘terms and
conditions’ of the contracts must be
‘mutually agreeable’ to the Secretary of
the Interior, as well as the contractor.”
(Complaint, page 19, ¶ ¶ 59 and 60.)
“The converted water contracts lock in
federal water deliveries to large agricultural
water users with no consideration
of the environmental consequences of
making the contracts permanent,” the
groups noted. “The recipients include
Westlands Water District, which
serves about 600,000 acres on the San
Joaquin Valley’s west side. Westlands,
the Central Valley Project’s largest
customer, uses about as much water as
the entire state of New Hampshire.”
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive
director of Restore the Delta, said, “It
is ridiculous that Reclamation would
support a scheme to award permanent
water contracts to water districts as
drought conditions return to California.
Big industrial irrigation districts like
Westlands are the last in line for water
rights, but are trying to ensure that they
can take all the water they desire from
the imperiled Bay-Delta estuary.”
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt,
who represented Westlands in legal
disputes challenging two environmental
limitations on Westlands’ Central Valley
Project water when he was a partner at
the law firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber
Schreck, announced Westlands’ new
permanent contract in February.
Ernest Conant, California-Great
Basin’s regional director, signed the
contracts with Westlands and other
water agencies at Folsom Lake on the
American River east of Sacramento on
February 28.
“Completing these contracts is a big
win-win for our contractors and the
American public,” Conant claimed at
the signing. “The federal government
will receive early payment of over
$200 million, which Congress directed
should be used for much-needed storage
projects.”
Westlands Water
District describes
itself as “the
largest agricultural
water district in
the United States,
made up of more
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than 1,000 square miles of prime
farmland in western Fresno and Kings
counties. Westlands provides water to
675 family-owned farms that average
600 acres in size.”
However, critics of the contracts
signing strongly disagree with the
district’s assessment that this land
is “prime farmland,” noting that the
district is located on arid, drainage-impaired
land located on the west side
of the San Joaquin Valley. Fishing
groups, Tribes, conservationists,
family farmers and environmental
justice advocates have been pushing to
retire much of this land from agricultural
production for many years.
“Bernhardt’s sweetheart deal with
Westlands is great news for billionaires
and industrial agriculture, but the
Delta, salmon and migratory birds will
all suffer,” said Jeff Miller, a senior
conservation advocate at the Center
for Biological Diversity. “Bernhardt
is personally delivering on the Trump
administration’s promise to maximize
Central Valley Project water deliveries,
regardless of the environmental costs.”
Other districts and cities signing the
permanent contracts on the same day
in February included the East Bay
Municipal Utility District, City of
Folsom, Placer County Water Agency,
City of Roseville, Sacramento County
Water Agency, Sacramento Municipal
Utility District and San Juan Water
District.
“The same violation of NEPA takes
place in the other contracts, although
some of the contracts are comparatively
small and comparatively
harmless compared to the Westlands
contract,” concluded Wright. “NEPA
compliance needs to take place with
respect to all of the contracts. None of
them should be permanent contracts
forever.”
State Resources Board
Gives Reclamation An F
Grade for Refusing to Save
California Salmon
SAN FRANCISCO — In a letter,
“as scathing as bureaucrats write,”
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the State Water Resources Control
Board is “taking the Trump administration’s
Bureau of Reclamation to
the woodshed over its refusal to take
meaningful steps to avoid annihilating
California’s salmon runs this
fall,” according to a statement from
the Golden State Salmon Association
(GSSA).
The GSSA said the State Board’s
action “follows months of advocacy”
by the Golden State Salmon Association
calling attention to the impending
overheating of the upper Sacramento
River spawning grounds this fall due
to release of too much Lake Shasta
water during the irrigation season. The
state board’s action follows an “influential
letter” GSSA and allies sent to
the board on May 11 that provided the
board with a road map for its subsequent
action.
“In its letter to the Bureau, the State
Board notes the feds’ current draining
of Lake Shasta is setting up conditions
like those in 2013 which led to the
disastrous fish kills of 2014 and 2015.
Because of low Lake Shasta water
levels, and a lack of cold water in
the lake, the upper Sacramento River
became too warm to support incubating
salmon eggs. The State Board
points out the volume of the coldest
water in Lake Shasta is already 10
percent lower than Reclamation said it
would be two weeks ago, suggesting
the Bureau is either incompetent
or misleading the state,” GSSA
explained.
The group said the letter from the
State Board comes as a federal judge is
considering a request from GSSA and
allies to stop the Bureau from killing
this year’s returning adult salmon to
the Central Valley. “GSSA and allies
submitted the State Board’s letter to
the judge to further cement the case
that Trump administration actions
draining northern California’s salmon
rivers must be stopped now,” GSSA
stated.
“Since early April, the Water Board
has repeatedly asked US Interior
Secretary Bernhardt’s Bureau of
Reclamation to consider different
ways to deliver water to its agricultural
water districts this year that
won’t destroy salmon, but the feds
have so far ignored them,” said John
McManus, president of GSSA. “The
State Board has apparently had enough
and is telling the Bureau it has failed
to live up to its obligations to operate
the federal Central Valley Project in a
legal and responsible way. Maybe the
next action will come from the federal
judge who is considering these violations
in the lawsuit filed by GSSA and
our allies.”
“The Water Board is telling the feds
to provide some additional model runs
in the next 20 days. Such modeling
might reveal what tradeoffs could
occur if Shasta releases were cut back
to save more cold water for salmon
this fall. It’s not yet clear what the
state will do if the feds continue to
ignore them,” added McManus.