ELR Citation: ELR 20038
No(s). C044714 (Cal. App. 3d Dist. Feb 9, 2006)

A court affirms, modifies, and reverses a lower court's judgments in seven coordinated cases involving the California State Water Resource Control Board's (Board's) implementation of a water quality plan in a water rights proceeding, a related environmental impact report, a joint points of diversion petition, a change petition, and challenges to the Board's impartiality. The court agreed with the lower court in most respects, but disagreed in a few instances. Most significantly, the court agreed that the Board erred when it failed to allocate responsibility for meeting all of the flow objectives in the 1995 San Francisco Bay/Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Estuary Plan (Bay-Delta Plan). The Board was not entitled to implement alternate flow objectives agreed to by various interested parties in lieu of the flow objectives actually provided for in the plan. The Board also failed to adequately implement certain salinity objectives in the 1995 Bay-Delta Plan and failed to implement the minimum flows necessary to achieve the narrative objective for salmon protection in the plan. Contrary to the lower court's findings, however, a 1965 water district merger statute did not impose a ministerial duty on the Board to augment the authorized place of use in U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Central Valley Project permits to include all of the lands within the Westlands water district service area without mitigation. The court also rejected all of the alternate arguments for upholding this aspect of the lower court's decision.