2 Groups Sue to Stop Water Shipments

Two environmental groups have filed suit to prevent shipments of water from Kern County farms to burgeoning developments in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Officially, the annual shipments of 41,000 acre-feet of water are destined for Castaic Lake Water Agency’s existing customers in northern Los Angeles County and southern Ventura County, as well as for upcoming Santa Clarita Valley developments that the agency would serve. An acre-foot of water is enough to meet the needs of two families for a year.

But the backdrop to this legal battle is the controversial Newhall Ranch development of 20,885 homes along the Santa Clara River. The development, approved by Los Angeles County supervisors in 1998, is the largest residential project in county history. It isn’t slated to break ground until 2008.

Two statewide nonprofit organizations, the California Water Impact Network and the Planning and Conservation League, filed separate lawsuits in January seeking to block the annual transfer from the Kern County Water Agency to the Castaic Lake Water Agency.

The lawsuits contend that the water transfer is based on promised amounts that cannot actually be delivered, a concept referred to as “paper water.”

Also at issue are the interpretations of a court ruling and settlement in a 2000 lawsuit that the Planning and Conservation League brought against the state Department of Water Resources. That suit challenged the 1995 Monterey Agreement, a contract between the department and state water contractors.

In the suit, the league asserted that the Department of Water Resources, rather than a local agency, should serve as lead agency when assessing the environmental consequences of State Water Project transfers. The court ruled in favor of the league and invalidated the Monterey Agreement’s environmental impact report.

The resulting 2003 settlement stipulated that state water officials would prepare a new environmental impact report for the Monterey Agreement.

In the meantime, another lawsuit, brought against the Castaic Lake Water Agency by the Friends of the Santa Clara River, challenged the validity of the Kern transfer’s environmental impact report, because it was based, in part, on the invalidated Monterey Agreement report. A judge ruled that a new report must be prepared for the Kern transfer.

The Castaic Lake Water Agency paid nearly $46 million for the Kern water in 1999. A year later the transfer began -- a portion is now in use, some is being stored for use in dry years and some is slated for future approved growth, said Castaic’s general manager, Dan Masnada.

Late last year, the Castaic Lake agency conducted, prepared and adopted its own environmental impact report, which triggered the recent lawsuits.

The environmental groups say the Department of Water Resources must both oversee the transfer and prepare a new report for the Kern transfer.

But Castaic Lake agency officials say the court ruling determined that the Department of Water Resources would be the lead agency for transfers affecting the entire state, not those of local significance such as the Kern transfer.

They also contend that the settlement stipulated that the Kern transfer would be decided by the Los Angeles County Superior Court, which was ruling on the Friends of the Santa Clara River suit. That ruling called for a new report but did not say it had to wait for preparation of a new Monterey Agreement report, Castaic Lake agency officials said.

Meanwhile, the water began to flow from Kern to Castaic in 2000.

The Planning and Conservation League is demanding that the transfer be halted until the Department of Water Resources completes a new environmental impact report. A draft is expected to be completed later this year.

“What Castaic has done is a slap in the face to the Court of Appeals in Sacramento, which said that only the state can do this statewide assessment,” said Tony Rossmann, an attorney and board member for the Planning and Conservation League. “Castaic wants to have that 41,000 acre-feet in their portfolio so that the developers in their jurisdiction can say they’ve got water for new development. So I can understand their motivation to be so itchy to jump ahead of the process.”

The California Water Impact Network also objects, but for a slightly different reason.

“The Department of Water Resources needs to be the lead agency,” said Carolee Krieger, president of the network. “Once we start going away from the state overseeing this, we start down the slippery slope toward privatization of our water.”

Officials at the Castaic Lake Water Agency and with developer Newhall Land & Farming Co. say portions of the 41,000 acre-foot transfer are slated for smaller Newhall projects, such as Westcreek and Riverpark, but none will go toward the Newhall Ranch project.

“At Newhall Ranch, we’re not relying on any state water,” said company spokeswoman Marlee Lauffer.

Instead, the development will largely rely on groundwater now used for agriculture, Lauffer said.

Masnada called the lawsuits “totally without merit” and the “paper water” allegations ludicrous.

The lawsuits are “essentially trying to stop a transfer of water between a willing buyer and a willing seller,” Masnada said. The environmental groups are “less interested in protecting the environment than they are in imposing their land-use planning desires. It’s about restricting growth in our service area.”

But Lynne Plambeck, president of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, an environmental group that previously sued Los Angeles County over water issues, said that if Newhall Ranch’s water sources run short, it will have to fall back on the state water supply provided by the Castaic Lake agency.

“They’re in the Castaic service area, and they wouldn’t be able to withhold it from them, and I think that’s what Newhall’s counting on,” Plambeck said. “It’s kind of a word game they’re playing.”

Wrangling over the 41,000 acre-feet of water continued last week.

On Wednesday, the Castaic Lake agency’s board of directors voted 10 to 0 to approve a report assessing the availability of water for another proposed development, the Keystone project. That prompted a letter of protest from the Planning and Conservation League, which said the 979-unit development would rely on the Kern water as well.