Judge Vilardi Rejects DWR’s 2009 Drought Water Bank Approval

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contacts:
Barbara Vlamis, Board Member,
California Water Impact Network
(530) 519-7468

Bill Jennings, Chairman
California Sportfishing Protection
Alliance
(209) 464-5067

Carolee Krieger, Executive Director
California Water Impact Network
(805) 969-0824

Judge Vilardi Rejects DWR’s 2009 Drought Water Bank Approval

Pleasanton, CA – Alameda County Superior Court Judge Alice Vilardi on Monday, March 15, 2010, ruled that the Governor and the California Department of Water Resources illegally approved the 2009 Drought Water Bank when they “improperly” exempted the water transfer program from the California Environmental Quality Act last year.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s February 2009 “drought emergency” proclamation, while asserting an emergency, failed to declare “that there was a disaster, or identify a specific geographically described disaster-stricken area” as California law requires. Nothing in the proclamation, said the judge, provided “substantial evidence of a sudden, unexpected occurrence, involving a clear and imminent danger, demand immediate action to prevent or mitigate loss of or damage to life, health, property, or essential public services” and only cited possible consequences
“months or years in the future.”

Because the Governor’s proclamation also didn’t waive CEQA requirements and actually directed DWR to protect the environment, the court ordered the agency to comply with CEQA even though the project is over.
In a suit brought last April 2009 by the Butte Environmental Council (BEC), the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance (CSPA) and the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), the groups contested the Governor’s 2009 drought emergency proclamation as an improper use of CEQA’s emergency provisions, and that the state must still protect the environment.

“This decision sets a critical precedent,” said Bill Jennings, chairman of CSPA, “because the state wants to do
another water transfer program this year patterned after last year’s. And they’re relying on the same flawed data and reports.” Last spring and summer, the State Water Board issued orders approving drought-related water transfers relying on the Governor’s faulty declaration and DWR’s environmental reviews. And this year, the state and the US Bureau of Reclamation are promoting another water transfer program that is modeled on last year’s drought water bank.

“This is a great victory for the California public,” said Carolee Krieger, executive director of the California Water Impact Network (C-WIN), “because it warns DWR and the Governor not to abuse their obligations to the people of California to follow the law and protect the Delta and the environment.”

“DWR tried to rely on an old environmental study for an entirely different project for the drought water bank,” said Barbara Vlamis, a C-WIN board member who helped prepare the lawsuit when she worked for BEC in 2009, “but when confronted with the obvious illegalities, they tried pulling an emergency out of their bag of tricks and the court saw through it.” The old environmental study would have allowed up to 600,000 acre-feet to move from Sacramento Valley water sellers to buyers in the western San Joaquin Valley, but was itself never given final approval by the state.

Under that study, rice growers in the Sacramento Valley could use more than half that amount pumped as
groundwater from their lands to continue cultivating their crops. “Some surface water transfers like these that would cross the Delta put north state groundwater resources at severe risk of the water table dropping and harming family farmers,” Vlamis added.