Hat tip: Brown & Caldwell California Water News
The San Francisco Chronicle sounds off on the impending settlement by the Bush Administration in the 1990 case where the Federal government diverted water from farms in the San Joaquin valley to bolster populations of endangered fish.
The editorial sides against the ruling and worries that having to pay for any water taken from people who have bought the rights to it will lead to fundamental changes in the way water has been managed in the state.
...Joseph Sax, a UC Berkeley Boalt Hall School of Law professor who helped prepare a brief against the water districts' claims [says that] Judge Wiese in effect ruled that the users of the water, through their local water districts, owned the water. He ordered the federal government to pay the growers $14 million in damages, which, with interest and attorneys' fees, has grown to $26 million. ''This could have a devastating impact on regulating water in the public interest in California,'' Sax told us.
The SF Chronicle urges its readers to send e-mail to John Ashcroft asking him to appeal the decision. For the sake of the Eighth Amendment, I hope he gets lots of mail asking him not to appeal.
(And notice how little difference there is between this editorial and the "news" articles cited here.)
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