The Friends of the Eel River (FOER) have won an historic legal case against the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA). The decision in this case will have tremendous consequences on expansion, development and urban sprawl in Sonoma County. It will also have an enormous impact on a river that has all but been destroyed.

Below is the legal statement issued by FOER.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 17, 2003

Contacts:

APPEALS COURT OVERTURNS PROPOSED RUSSIAN RIVER DIVERSIONS

Yesterday the California Court of Appeal struck down an ambitious plan by the Sonoma County Water Agency to increase its annual diversions of water from the Russian River by 26,000 acre-feet to serve up to 150,000 new customers in rapidly growing areas of Sonoma and Marin Counties.

The plan was challenged by Friends of the Eel River and other environmental, sportfishing and Native American groups because it assumed that Pacific Gas & Electric Company's existing diversions of water from the Eel River to the Russian River, which account for most of the Russian River's summer flows, would continue unchanged despite their severe adverse impact on the Eel River's imperiled salmon. Several endangered species are among the fish populations that have been harmed by PG&E's historic diversion of 180,000 acre-feet annually from the Eel River—up to 98 percent of its summer flow.

The court ruled that the Water Agency's environmental impact report on its water project was deficient because it failed to disclose the project's dependence on PG&E's diversions, their harm to the Eel River's endangered salmon, and their potential curtailment by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to restore the Eel's declining fish populations.

FERC is currently considering proposals by PG&E, and state and federal fisheries agencies to reduce the diversions by 22 percent, and a request by Friends of the Eel River, Native Americans and sports fishermen to eliminate PG&E's diversions altogether. The court was particularly troubled by the Water Agency's misleading claims in its EIR that there was adequate water for the project. Those assertions conflicted sharply with its representations to FERC that the contemplated curtailments in PG&E's Eel River diversions "would have severe environmental consequences to the Russian River, including the risk of dewatering portions of the river during critically dry years." Observing that "[t]he record tells a far different story from the one the Agency relates in its EIR," the court pointed out that "every proposal before FERC—including the Agency's own—posits a decrease in the amount of water available to the Agency to supply its customers' needs at a time when the Agency is seeking to increase the amount of water it takes out of the Russian River."

Environmental and Native American groups praised the court's ruling. Nadananda, President of Friends of the Eel River, exulted that "the Eel River's salmon and steelhead now have a fighting chance to make a comeback. Had the Water Agency's plan been upheld, this incredible natural resource—the cornerstone of the North Coast's former world-class salmon fishery—would have been doomed to extinction." Stephan Volker, the groups' lawyer, likewise hailed the decision as a landmark victory: "The Water Agency's plan would have been the final nail in the Eel River's coffin. The court saw through the Water Agency's doublespeak and insisted on honest disclosure of this plan's hidden impacts and fair consideration of alternatives including water conservation."