Articles

Last week, a coalition of California Central Valley water districts sued the Bureau of Reclamation in the latest installment of the litigation wars over the delta smelt.*  The new lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Fresno, and coming on the heels of the Governor Brown administration's announcement to release an additional annual 200,000 ...

Earlier this week, a coalition of "corporate"** environmental groups sought leave to file a supplemental complaint in NRDC v. Jewell, to challenge the Bureau of Reclamation's water allocations to Sacramento River water users.  The nub of this case---which has been going on for a decade---is the environmentalists' objections to the Bureau's renewa ...

As noted yesterday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Bureau of Reclamation must consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service when it chooses to renew various contracts for water from the Central Valley Project.  Media articles quote one water-user lawyer describing the decision as merely "procedural," and another water-user atto ...

Last week, Judge Lawrence O'Neill of the Eastern District of California okayed the Bureau of Reclamation's plan to release up to 20,000 acre-feet of water into the Trinity and Klamath Rivers.  San Joaquin Valley water districts have filed a lawsuit challenging the releases, which ostensibly are for the health of spawning salmon populations.  Judg ...

Earlier this month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an attempt by water users within the San Luis Unit of the Central Valley Project to require the Bureau of Reclamation to provide them more water.  In San Luis Unit Food Producers v. United States, the appellate court, in an opinion authored by Judge Trott, upheld the lower court's di ...

Author:  Damien M. Schiff The Department of the Interior announced today that the Bureau of Reclamation will increase the water allocation for those who receive Central Valley Project water south of the Sacramento Delta, from 5% of contractual allotment to 25%.  That's definitely good news for farmers, farm workers, and all the peop ...

Author: Brandon Middleton Much has been made about the Bureau of Reclamation's announcement last week that farmers in the western San Joaquin Valley will receive 30% of their contractual water allotments if 2010 is an average water year.  As I mentioned earlier this week, that's a very big "if."  The San Francisco Chr ...