For Immediate Release: May 12, 2020
Contact:
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, 209-479-2053, barbara@restorethedelta.org
A federal court has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to pump more water to the agricultural Central Valley, which the State of California and conservation groups said would threaten endangered species and salmon runs.
A judge issued a preliminary injunction in two lawsuits brought against the administration by California’s Natural Resources Agency and Environmental Protection Agency and by a half-dozen environmental groups.
The order bars the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation until May 31 from going ahead with expanding the amount of water it pumps from the San Joaquin Delta through the federal Central Valley Project. The suits argued that the exports would cause irreparable harm to species protected by state and federal law.
The California Office of the Attorney General issued a statement.
A copy of the decision can be found here.
Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta said:
“We are grateful to Attorney General Becerra’s office and our friends at NRDC for this temporary protection of California’s vanishing salmon runs. While this course of litigation is on the right track, it is still in process. Despite claims by industrial agricultural growers and the Trump Administration that environmental flows are ‘wasted water,’ in federal court, science, facts, and rational truth still matter for the health of the Delta.”