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Smelt Suit: Water users take their case to the courts

Posted by: Maven on December 20, 2009 at 8:50 am

From CFS Engineering:

“For nearly three decades, Westlands Water District received almost 100 percent of its water allocation from the federal Central Valley Project. Water allocations began to decrease in 1992, thanks to environmental legislation, but there was still enough to grow crops and make a living. However, in February the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees the Central Valley Project, announced farmers south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta would receive no water. In the end, residents received a drastically reduced amount.

Westlands, which receives all of its water from the CVP, serves about 50,000 people in western Fresno and Kings counties, most of whom depend on agriculture. In March, Westlands and the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority, an organization that represents CVP water users and of which Westlands is a member, sued the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

The water agencies sued the federal government over a document the Fish and Wildlife Service released in December 2008. The biological opinion examined the effects of operating the CVP and the State Water Project, the state’s two main water systems, on Delta smelt, a threatened fish under the federal Endangered Species Act. The act requires Fish and Wildlife to produce a biological opinion if a federal project could jeopardize an endangered species’ existence. … “

Read more from CFS Engineering by clicking here.

December 20, 2009 · Filed Under Delta Issues, Wildlife & Endangered Species

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