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By Gig Conaughton
North County Times
February 5, 2006
SAN DIEGO
---- Water officials say a new canal-lining plan will deliver
enough water to San Diego County to sustain more than 135,000
households every year for more than a century.
Congress passed a law in December saying the plan should go
forward without delay, despite objections from Mexican farmers
and California environmental groups who say it could kill
Mexicali farming and wetlands.
Yet
the long-discussed $353.6 million project, which would line
parts of Imperial Valley's All-American Canal with concrete,
remains in legal limbo, halted by a federal appeals court
order. The 82-mile canal runs from northeast of Yuma, Ariz.,
down along the U.S.-Mexico border into Imperial County east of
San Diego, delivering water from the Colorado River to the
desert.
San Diego County Water Authority officials said the cost of
lining the canal continues to rise because of the delays, and
that the earliest the project could start bringing water to
the county would be spring 2009.
"We were hoping to start (construction) in August ...
this pretty much delays us about a year in the timeline,"
said Halla Razak, the authority's water resources manager.
Dan Hentschke, the water authority's top lawyer, said last
week that the latest legal argument revolves around whether
the law that Congress passed in December should override an
injunction the U.S. Ninth Court of Appeals slapped on the
project in August.
Hentschke said attorneys for the United States Bureau of
Reclamation and environmental opponents have each submitted
their arguments, but the court has not given any timetable for
when it would hear the issue.
Razak said that the water agency's hope is that the court will
hear the issue in March.
"We think we might be hearing from the court sometime in
March, and we're hoping that we'll be able to restart the
process (and begin construction) by June," Razak said.
However, Robert Gaylord Smith, the attorney representing the
environmental and Mexicali farmers' interests that want to
kill the project, said by e-mail last week that they believe
the courts will side with the environmentalists.
"I think (our chances) are very good," Smith wrote,
"but it's up to the courts to decide."
The canal-lining project, which has been discussed for nearly
20 years, would build a concrete-lined replacement for a
23-mile stretch of the Imperial Valley's earth-lined
All-American Canal.
The project would conserve water by preventing it from seeping
through the canal bed. The canal doesn't directly deliver
water to San Diego. But the conserved water would be shipped
via Metropolitan Water District of Southern California
pipelines to San Diego County residents for 110 years.
Water officials have been discussing the canal-lining plan
since the 1990s.
In 2003, it became part of a complex series of agreements
among San Diego County, Imperial Valley, Coachella Valley, the
Metropolitan Water District, the state of California, six
other Western states and the federal Bureau of Reclamation.
Those deals were designed to get California to cut its take of
water from the Colorado River to give the other growing
Western states a larger share.
But the project was derailed late last year by a challenge
filed by an unusual coalition of Mexican business interests
and California environmental groups.
Those groups said that water seeping through the bottom of the
canal has sustained groundwater supplies for Mexicali farmers,
wetlands and endangered animals for decades. Lining the canal,
they argued, would steal that water and potentially kill those
animals, wetlands and farms.
A Superior court judge ruled against the groups twice in 2006.
But in August, to the surprise of federal, state and regional
water officials and even the canal-lining project's
environmental foes, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
overruled the Superior Court and banned further work on the
project until it could hear the issue again.
Then in December, Congress passed an omnibus bill containing
several proposed laws. The legislation includes a portion
pushed by the water authority that reaffirms Congress' support
of the canal-lining plan and orders the project carried out
"without delay."
The bill also states that Congress, not the courts, have sole
authority to deal with international treaties and whether
water seeping out of the All-American Canal belongs to Mexico
or the United States.
The Bureau of Reclamation and water agencies have submitted
arguments to the Ninth Court that the injunction stopping the
canal-lining project should now be moot.
Smith and the environmental groups have filed papers arguing
that the courts, not Congress, should decide the issue.
Razak, meanwhile, said the canal-lining project's costs are
rising because of the delay.
Just recently, she said, water agencies completed negotiating
a deal to pay the company that is waiting to construct one
portion of the lining project an additional $7.5 million just
to cover the cost of waiting.
Razak said water agencies are still negotiating with a second
company that is waiting to build another portion of the
stalled project.
In addition, Razak said, the costs of such materials as
concrete are expected to increase as the delay continues.
The cost of the canal-lining project was $353.6 million.
However, the water authority and San Diego County ratepayers
are only paying $251 million. Because of the importance of the
project, the state is paying the rest.
Water officials, meanwhile, say that even with the delays and
increases, the canal-lining project is more than worth it.
In April, Razak said the cost of water coming from a lined
canal, averaged over 110 years, would be about $20 per acre
foot, far cheaper than the $502 to $598 the water authority
now pays the Metropolitan Water District for imported water.
An acre foot of water is 325,900 gallons, enough to sustain
two households for a year.
Razak said last week that the delays have been frustrating.
"We would have been smack in the middle of
construction," she said. "But I am hopeful that
we'll be able to proceed soon. We're trying to make sure that
we have enough water to meet the needs of the region. This is
a good resource to do that. We're just waiting for it to
happen."
Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.
Comment at nctimes.com.
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