Lawsuit Seeks to Force EPA to Set Delta, Bay Standards

A coalition of environmental and fishery groups is expected to file a lawsuit today against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the latest maneuver in a protracted struggle to obtain ecological protection for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The lawsuit, sent Thursday by overnight mail to U.S. District Court in Sacramento, seeks to force the EPA to issue water quality standards for the delta and neighboring San Francisco Bay.

The federal agency has 60 days to respond before a hearing will be scheduled, but an EPA spokeswoman said Thursday that the lawsuit is unnecessary because the agency intends to issue standards soon.

“We expect to forward draft standards to Washington by the end of the month,” said Lois Grunwald of the EPA’s San Francisco office. “It will be some months after that that the standards are finalized.”

The new standards would replace those set by the state in 1978, which have long been considered inadequate in protecting fish and wildlife threatened by water diversions from the delta. About two-thirds of the state’s drinking water and most irrigation water for Central Valley farms drain from the estuary.

The lawsuit is likely to be the opening volley in another legal battle over water quality standards in the troubled delta. In the past, the state has challenged the EPA’s authority to dictate solutions to problems there, and a similar showdown is anticipated if the EPA intervenes this time.

Numerous attempts have been made over the past 15 years to revise the standards, but none have succeeded. The most recent effort collapsed last month when Gov. Pete Wilson directed the state water board to abandon a series of temporary protections it had proposed in December.

Wilson had asked the board to develop the protections, but he complained last month that new requirements under the Endangered Species Act had preempted the state effort. The move angered environmentalists and fishing groups, who accused Wilson of backing down to please agricultural interests.

“We are fed up with all of the betrayal and needless expenditure of energy,” said Stephan Volker, staff attorney for the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund, one of 19 groups filing the lawsuit. “We are going to court to tell the agencies to do their job.”

The EPA, which oversees implementation of the Clean Water Act, has been working on new standards since 1991 when the agency rejected a water quality plan proposed by the state for the bay and delta. EPA officials have long criticized the state’s poor record in the area, but have stopped short of intervention, preferring to encourage the state to try again.

But EPA officials said last month that Wilson’s decision to drop the temporary protections drafted by the state board left the agency with no choice but to issue its own standards. Volker said the lawsuit is necessary to ensure that the EPA follows through on its commitment.

Meanwhile, a committee set up by Wilson to find long-term solutions to the delta’s problems meets today for the first time since the governor dropped his support for the temporary protections. The group will decide whether it can continue even though five of its 22 members have either quit or suspended participation to protest Wilson’s decision.

Sacramento attorney J. William Yeates, who represented fishery groups, was the latest to leave the panel, saying in his resignation letter that the committee could no longer “play a meaningful role” because of Wilson’s change of position.