Appeals court stops canal lining

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer | Friday, August 25, 2006 9:49 PM PDT ∞

In a move that surprised water officials and their environmental foes alike this week, a federal court banned all further work on a $251 million canal-lining project expected to bring San Diego County residents billions of gallons of water every year for more than a century.

Two judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued a terse emergency injunction against the long-discussed Imperial Valley canal-lining project, barring all work until the appeals court could hold a formal hearing.

The ruling leaves the project in limbo until Dec. 4 at the earliest, according to the court.

Environmentalists and Mexican business groups who sued the project immediately hailed the injunction.

They said it proved that there was merit to their twice-rejected arguments that the project would harm the desert's residents and habitat and would steal water from Mexican farmers and wetlands. A Superior Court judge ruled against those arguments in June.

"We're happily surprised," said attorney Claire Hervey Collins, a spokeswoman representing an environmental coalition. "We fought hard to achieve this result and we're delighted. ... We thought we were entitled to this all along."

But Imperial Valley and San Diego County water officials just as immediately said they were "surprised and disappointed" ---- and predicted that construction delays would cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

"I think we're both surprised and disappointed because of the careful ruling of the trial court judge and because of the significance of this project to Southern California and the Western United States," said Dan Hentschke, general counsel of the San Diego County Water Authority.

Hentschke and others said they were confident that the appeals court would eventually rule in their favor.

Serious construction on the All-American canal lining project wasn't expected to start for a couple of weeks, and was scheduled to take up to two years to complete. But Imperial Valley officials said preliminary work that required teams of workers had already begun. Those crews will now be sent home.

The canal-lining project was scheduled to be a concrete-lined replacement for a 23-mile stretch of Imperial Valley's earth-lined, 82-mile All-American Canal. It is one of two canal-lining projects, along with one in Imperial Valley's neighboring Coachella Valley, that the state and San Diego County Water Authority are funding. Discussion about the projects dates nearly 20 years.

The two projects are part of a complex series of agreements among San Diego County, Imperial Valley, Coachella, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the state of California, the federal Bureau of Reclamation ---- and, indirectly ---- six other Western states that share the Colorado River.

Lining the canals is expected to save the river water that now seeps from the earthen bed of the two canals.

The "saved" water ---- enough to sustain 154,000 households a year ---- would be shipped to San Diego County residents for 110 years. The state, meanwhile, is helping to pay for the projects because they will also slash the amount of Colorado River water that the state uses ---- a condition of a historic deal the state reached with six other Western states at the prodding of the federal government in 2003.

But an unusual coalition of California environmentalists and Mexican businessmen filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the project last year.

The coalition argued that the water that has been seeping through the canal bed for decades supplies groundwater that sustains Mexicali farmers, wetlands and endangered animals.

Hervey Collins also said the lawsuit challenged the federal government's environmental study. The suit alleged that the study did not adequately address the argument that dust from digging up 25 million cubic yards of desert in Imperial Valley to build the concrete canals would further harm the valley's already poor air quality.

In June, a Superior Court judge rejected the arguments.

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.

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