Lawsuit challenges restrictions on state water operations
| Friday, Mar 13 2009 03:58 PM
Last Updated Friday, Mar 27 2009 11:54 AM
The Coalition for a Sustainable Delta and the Kern County Water Agency Friday joined other water users in a lawsuit challenging federal regulatory restrictions on state water operations.
The group is challenging restrictions designed to protect the delta smelt, a federally protected endangered species that lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The restrictions have greatly reduced water supplies for 25 million Californians and millions of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland.
Among other things, the lawsuit alleges the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service failed to use the best available scientific data to determine the effects of water operations and other activities on the threatened Delta smelt, ignoring other stressors on native Bay-Delta fish.
