Water Education Foundation
This is just one post in the Delta Issues Category
Click here to view all posts

Delta landowner files suit against DWR, alleging negligence by failing to dredge accumulated sediments, thus raising flood risk

Posted by: Maven on February 25, 2008 at 2:52 pm

From Business Wire:

Delta landowner Dino Cortopassi sued the state of California today for allegedly failing to meet its historic responsibility to maintain the water-carrying capacity of Delta channels, asking the court to order state officials to dredge accumulated sediments – which increase flood risks – from channel beds.  Failure to dredge North Delta channels “is irresponsible, incompetent, unreasonable, inexcusable, and demands immediate remediation,” the lawsuit asserts.

On behalf of Cortopassi Partners, a family company which owns Canal Ranch on the Mokelumne River near Walnut Grove, Reclamation District 2086 joined in filing the lawsuit in San Joaquin County Superior Court.

“This lawsuit is about much more than our family’s farmland,” said Cortopassi. “The state’s 30-year failure to remove sediment from channels and sloughs threatens property in the North Delta.”

Cortopassi pointed to the Department of Water Resources Delta Suisun Marsh Office’s own web page, which acknowledges that channel sedimentation is a factor that has reduced channel capacity to the point that “the potential for flooding also threatens important public facilities and institutions in the North Delta area, including Interstate 5, the Union Pacific Railroad line, and (Sacramento County’s) Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center.” (quote from DWR Delta Suisun web page)

The lawsuit asserts that the state’s failure to dredge Delta channels violates its explicit duty to the public trust.

The complaint states that from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s, the state adopted a series of legislative and administrative actions to reclaim Delta lands by dredging sediments from Delta channels and using them to strengthen adjacent levees in order to reduce the flood risk of spring runoff and to protect productive farmland.

The Legislature charged the California Reclamation Board (recently renamed the “Central Valley Flood Protection Board”), the Department of Water Resources and the State Lands Commission with the duty and jurisdiction to protect and maintain the Delta for the public benefit, particularly in mitigating flood risks.

According to the complaint, whenever the Department of Water Resources uses Delta channels to convey water – including conveying Northern California water to State Water Project export pumps in the southern Delta – DWR must maintain channels “so as to prevent injury to other water users and/or injury to levees.”

However, the complaint continues, since the mid-1970s, the state agencies have manipulated Delta water flows in a manner causing channels and sloughs to accumulate soil sediments, which has reduced their runoff-water carrying capacity. With sediment accumulations now reaching five to eight feet in some areas, the result has been increased North Delta flood risk.

In addition, the lawsuit asserts that the state misused $35 million of flood control bond funds approved by California voters as part of Proposition 13 in 2000 and designated for flood control in the North Delta in 2001.(1) Thus the state agencies have failed “to meet their long-standing individual and collective duty to mitigate Delta flood risks, and have essentially wasted $35 million in taxpayer dollars.”

(1) In 2001, the state donated $35 million to the Nature Conservancy to purchase Staten Island, a 9,000-acre reclaimed farm tract immediately adjacent to Canal Ranch. The only thing DWR received from this donation was Nature Conservancy’s vague contractual “cooperation” to participate in DWR’s “North Delta Water Plan.”

The lawsuit asserts that now, almost eight years later, the state has not yet promulgated or acted upon the North Delta Water Plan, and therefore has not utilized the $35 million of bond funds for its designated purpose – flood control.

Cortopassi’s complaint specifically asks the court to direct DWR to promptly dredge the accumulated sedimentation in the Mokelumne River and other adjacent sedimented channels posing flood risk to Canal Ranch. It asks the Court to find DWR (and its related defendants) negligent in their duty to mitigate Delta flood risks.

February 25, 2008 · Filed Under Delta Issues

Comments

Leave a Reply