Businesses, residents, and farmers across California have been enduring water cutbacks since the four-year state dry spell.
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According to the state board, the curtailment letters were technically notices, not orders: Only if the districts continued to withdraw water would the board issue enforcement orders, subjecting violators to steep fines or possible court prosecution. The judge said the four agencies weren’t given the right to defend their rights in front of the water board.
The water board has told thousands of individuals, corporations and districts with water rights to stop diverting from rivers and streams this year.
This comes as the first time in 40 years the state had moved to curtail the water rights of farmers and agencies whose claims dated from before 1914, a group that was usually protected by their long-standing water rights. It could affect everybody that received a curtailment order, he said.
Unauthorized diversions during the drought emergency can attract enhanced penalties of up to $1,000 per day and $2,500 per acre-foot of water diverted. However, only 33% responded to confirm they had stopped using the water.
California regulators violated the rights of some farmers by demanding mandatory water cutbacks without giving them a prior hearing, a state judge ruled on Friday.
Steve Herum, an attorney who challenged the board, says the court ruling throws all cutbacks into question. Rather, she took issue with the state board’s decision to curtail the four agencies’ water rights “without any sort of pre-deprivation hearing”.
The court is sending the state board a message that the water users have been trying to send for a few months, said Jennifer Spaletta, a lawyer for the Central Delta agency.
Tim Moran, a spokesman for the water board, said the agencies lawyers were reviewing the decision.
Under the new rules, cities and towns must cut water use by a quarter, in a complicated regulatory system that requires some communities to cut back use by 36 percent but others as little as 4 percent.
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Stuart Somach, a water lawyer in Sacramento not working on this case, said the state should have held “due process hearings to make sure there is no water available…None of that stuff happened”.
