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Salton Sea mitigation must continue

Posted by: Maven on January 17, 2010 at 7:18 am

From MyDesert.com:

“The environmental threat posed by the shrinking Salton Sea must be mitigated. However, a ruling by a Sacramento County Superior Court judge on the historic 2003 agreement that approved the largest water transfer in U.S. history puts the funding for the mitigation in jeopardy.

On Thursday, Judge Roland L. Candee made final his ruling that the Quantification Settlement Agreement (QSA) — a compact of 13 contracts involving various states and agencies, including the Coachella Valley Water District (CVWD) — was unconstitutional because it is a “blank check” for the state to protect the environment.

The QSA

The QSA attempted to settle a decades-long battle to get California to live within its 4.4 million acre-foot water right to the Colorado River. (An acre-foot is the amount of water a foot deep covering an acre, the size of a football field.)

As part of the agreement, the Imperial Irrigation District agreed that farmers would let land go fallow and transfer water to San Diego for urban uses. It also provides 330,000 acre-feet to CVWD. As agriculture shrinks around California’s largest lake, less runoff flows into it.

An appeal is coming

Steve Robbins, CVWD general manager, said district lawyers will attend a status conference with the judge Monday in Sacramento. … “

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January 17, 2010 · Filed Under Salton Sea

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