Federal judge disagrees on delta smelt plan
Ruling has bight points for environmentalists, farmers.
John Ellis
The Fresno Bee
08/31/2011
A federal judge in Fresno on Wednesday took issue with a federal government effort to push encroaching salt water back in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to help the threatened delta smelt.
U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger, however, didn't totally scrap the effort.
Instead, he found that there is support to keep encroaching saltwater west of the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.
Both environmentalists and advocates for farmers and other water users found something to like in the ruling.
"We're not happy with the change in location because the [smelt] is on the brink of extinction," said Trent Orr, an attorney with the environmental group Earthjustice.
The politically conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, however, praised the decision. The PLF was not involved in this legal battle, but has been part of other efforts on federal regulation of the delta smelt.
"Once again, federal regulators wanted to severely curtail water deliveries into Central and Southern California, but they didn't make a solid scientific case that the cutbacks were needed to help the delta smelt," PLF staff attorney Brandon Middleton said in a release.
Federal authorities had sought to push the encroaching salt water back to a point about 46 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge. Instead, Wanger's ruling pegged the spot at no closer than around 49 miles from the Golden Gate.
The change in location, Wanger's decision says, will "significantly reduce the water supply impact" to urban and agricultural water users.
Wanger also found the federal government failed to consider the National Environmental Policy Act when setting the saltwater encroachment line.
Federal officials, Wanger wrote, "completely abdicated their responsibility to consider reasonable alternatives" to the plan, which "would not only protect the species, but would also minimize the adverse impact on humans and the human environment."
