Anonymous - 7-20-2005 at 05:28 AM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050720-9999-7m20...
By Sandra Dibble
July 20, 2005
MEXICALI ? A lingering dispute over water rights along the California-Mexico border took an unprecedented legal turn yesterday as a coalition of U.S.
and Mexican groups sued the U.S. Department of Interior.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. federal court in Las Vegas, seeks to halt a multimillion-dollar U.S. plan to line 23 miles of the All-American Canal and
send the water that is saved to San Diego County.
"This will cause irreversible damage to our city," said Federico Prieto Gaxiola, president of Mexicali's Economic Development Council, in announcing
the lawsuit in the Baja California capital.
The council, a business-oriented planning group, has joined forces for the legal action with two California environmental organizations, Citizens
United for Resources and the Environment, or CURE, and Desert Citizens Against Pollution.
The lawsuit comes as rapidly growing communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexican border put pressure on limited water resources, and the United
States and Mexico confront unresolved issues about water rights.
The water saved through the lining project could supply 134,000 households in San Diego County, according to the San Diego County Water Authority. But
farmers in the Mexicali Valley who have relied on seepage from the All-American Canal to irrigate their crops for five decades say the project would
hurt them badly.
"We firmly believe that we have the right to use this water," said Victor Hermosillo, a former Mexicali mayor. Hermosillo, who owns one of Baja
California's leading construction companies, is spearheading the Mexican Development Council's campaign against the canal lining.
R. Gaylord Smith, a San Diego attorney who is the lead trial lawyer in the lawsuit, said the project violates the constitutional rights of users in
Mexico. "In the western part of the United States, we have a rule about water called 'first in time, is first in right.' That law applies here," he
said.
The lawsuit also claims the project would harm wildlife on both sides of the border by drying up Mexican wetlands that are fed by canal seepage. The
U.S. government "never looked at the socioeconomic impacts of what will occur by this action in Mexico," said Bill Snape, a Washington, D.C.,
environmental attorney for CURE.
U.S. officials have steadfastly maintained that the water carried by the All-American Canal belongs to California, part of California's annual 4.4
million acre-feet under the 1922 Colorado River Compact among seven western U.S. states.
"The water that we're saving through lining the canal is water that is allocated to California, not water that is allocated to Mexico," said Gordon
Hess, director of imported water for the San Diego County Water Authority. "We believe that each side has the right to manage its resources as
efficiently as possible."
For years, the lining issue has been discussed by the U.S. and Mexican federal governments through the International Boundary and Water Commission.
The talks continue, he said, and the United States has been offering to reduce the effects of the canal's lining on Mexico. One suggestion is to help
Mexico find financing to improve irrigation techniques in the Mexicali Valley.
The lawsuit does not affect the talks, Hess said. Nor does its filing affect the timing of the lining project, currently in the design phase.
Construction is expected to begin early next year. Costs are estimated between $180 million and $293 million.
The lawsuit was filed in Las Vegas because the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, an agency of the U.S. Department of Interior that owns the All-American
Canal, has its regional office in Nevada. A spokesman for the agency said yesterday it was premature to comment on the lawsuit.
The lining dispute has forced discussion of border groundwater issues that were never clearly defined when Mexico and the United States signed a water
treaty in 1944, said Steve Mumme, a Colorado State University political science professor who studies border-water issues.
"In the area of water, there's one enduring lesson: Where you don't have understanding, you have conflict. This is one of those areas, going back to
treaty negotiations, where understanding was not achieved."
Anonymous - 7-20-2005 at 05:29 AM
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-canal20jul20,1...
By Bettina Boxall
A long-simmering border dispute flared anew Tuesday when Mexican and California groups sued the U.S. government over a water conservation project that
will stop billions of gallons of Colorado River water from seeping under the border every year into an aquifer that supplies the bustling Mexicali
Valley.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, said the project would cause widespread economic and environmental harm by capturing water that
now steadily leaks from the All-American Canal, a 65-year-old aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to farmlands in the Imperial and Coachella
valleys.
The canal improvement project, authorized by Congress in 1988 and finally nearing construction, will replace a 23-mile-long section of the canal with
a channel lined with concrete, plugging the leaks. Efficient as it will be, the improved canal highlights a paradox confronting water managers as they
look for ways to wring waste from the irrigation systems that crisscross the West. Conservation may not be good for everybody and may come at a cost
to the environment and other farmers.
In this case, the suit alleges that the canal project will dry up Mexican farms and deprive south-of-the-border wetlands of water that supports more
than 100 bird species, some of them endangered.
Owned by the federal government and operated by the Imperial and other irrigation districts, the 80-mile-long canal transports most of California's
share of the Colorado River, diverting it at Imperial Dam, near Yuma, Ariz.
Because it is unlined, the canal loses copious amounts of water as it snakes across the sandy desert. The conservation project is designed to capture
much of that seepage ? about 68,000 acre feet a year, or enough to supply roughly half a million people. The state will pay the estimated
$135.6-million cost, and as part of a complicated Colorado River deal brokered by the federal government two years ago, most of the saved water will
go to the San Diego County Water Authority.
But San Diego's gain will be Mexico's loss. Water has been seeping over the border for a century from the All-American Canal and its predecessor, the
Alamo, into the aquifer that supplies Mexicali Valley wells, the plaintiffs argue. "We were using this water for over 100 years and we developed the
economy that depends on the seepage," said Rene Acuna, executive director of CDEM, a Mexicali Valley civic group, and one of the plaintiffs in the
lawsuit. "We pump it in Mexico. That makes it our water."
The suit further contends that without the canal seepage, the quality of water in the Mexicali aquifer will suffer. "The quantity of seepage at issue
is one of the primary sources of recharge to replenish the aquifer and stabilize salinity levels. Without the seepage, the Mexicali Aquifer's
groundwater quality is severely compromised and the aquifer ultimately could become completely unusable," the suit states.
U.S. interests say the cross-border water is part of California's Colorado River entitlement, a position supported by the International Boundary and
Water Commission.
"The seepage was effectively bonus water, and they don't have a legal right I can see to get it," said Jeffrey Kightlinger, general counsel for the
Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the region's water wholesaler.
Similarly, Gordon Hess, imported water director for the San Diego County authority, said the leakage "is water allocated to California."
"We believe each country and state has a right and obligation to use their water supply as efficiently as possible," he added.
A spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the canal and is a defendant in the suit, said he had not seen the claim and could not
comment.
The suit alleges that along with violating Mexican water rights, the canal project violates U.S. environmental laws because managers have not studied
the effect on south-of-the-border wetlands and the migratory birds that depend on them. Environmentalists say researchers have recently documented
nearly 5,000 acres of riparian habitat and marshlands in the Andrade Mesa area that offer refuge to 101 bird species.
"It's very clear when you're in the wetlands where the water is coming from," said attorney Bill Snape, representing Citizens United for Resources and
the Environment, a California nonprofit group and one of the plaintiffs in the case.
Snape said U.S. authorities should let the cross-boundary seepage continue and store water from wet years in the Mexican aquifer for the use of both
countries.
Anonymous - 7-20-2005 at 05:30 AM
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/nevada/2005/jul/19...
By KEN RITTER
LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Mexican organization and two nonprofit groups are suing the U.S. government to stop plans to line a canal near the border that
supplies water to farms in California's Imperial Valley.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, seeks class-action status for people in the Mexicali Valley of Mexico, and a
declaration that water seeping into the ground north of the border but serving people in Mexico cannot be seized by the United States.
Malissa Hathaway McKeith, lawyer for Azusa, Calif.-based Citizens United for Resources and the Environment, said the suit was filed in Las Vegas
because the Bureau of Reclamation office controlling lower Colorado River water deliveries is in nearby Boulder City.
Other plaintiffs are Desert Citizens Against Pollution, of Rosamond, Calif., and Consejo de Desarrollo Economico de Mexicali, a nonprofit organization
of business and civic leaders claiming to represent 1.3 million residents in Baja California's Mexicali Valley.
Bureau of Reclamation spokesman Bob Walsh declined comment on the lawsuit until agency lawyers reviewed it.
At issue is a decades-old federal plan to line the porous All-American Canal with concrete. The canal delivers water from the Colorado River just
north of the border to the agriculture-rich Imperial Valley in California.
The U.S. government estimates that almost 68,000 acre-feet of seepage could be saved if the canal is lined. An acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons,
enough to serve one or two households for one year.
The lawsuit puts the seepage at about 100,000 acre-feet per year, and claims the water resupplies an underground aquifer serving the arid southeastern
corner of California and the Mexicali Valley south of the border.
It claims the U.S. government failed to prepare required environmental studies, and has not ensured that threatened and endangered species and
migratory birds won't be hurt.
McKeith said the suit was prompted by government plans to request proposals next month and pick a contractor in February for the work.
The case is Consejo de Desarrollo Economico de Mexicali v. United States, 05-0870.
Anonymous - 7-20-2005 at 07:17 AM
?Quieren su agua?
?Pos; all? les va!
http://elcerebro.com/archivo/zapata.htm
Water Rights
MrBillM - 7-20-2005 at 12:06 PM
Mexico has rights to EXACTLY the amount of Colorado River water covered by International Treaty. No Mas.
This lawsuit will go nowhere.
US/Mex water dispute
tehag - 7-20-2005 at 02:14 PM
The suit and the ongoing water dispute between the two countries is nothing new. Here is a wonderful, and surprisingly upbeat book on the Colorado
Delta.
Red Delta by Charles Bergman, Fulcrum Press
U.S. plan to line canal with concrete sparks Mexican opposition
BajaNews - 3-13-2006 at 04:48 PM
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20060313-0013-ca-c...
By Elliot Spagat
March 13, 2006
MEXICALI, Mexico ? Despite its name, the All-American Canal has been leaking water to the Mexican side of the desert border for more than 60 years,
nourishing alfalfa, onion and cotton crops that might otherwise wither.
Now the U.S. government is preparing to line the earthen channel with concrete. Mexican farmers' loss will be California's gain: Scarce water that
will no longer be able to seep away instead will help flush toilets and water lawns more than 100 miles west in San Diego.
And that would affect thousands of families whose fields cover thousands of acres around Mexicali, an industrial city of 800,000 that is gobbling up
farmland on its outskirts. That's because the lining would prevent the replenishment of about 100 rural wells they use, according to critics of the
project.
Nazario Ortiz, who farms 100 acres about three miles inside Mexico, worries that his hardscrabble community won't survive.
?Everything comes from the canal, so everything is going to be ruined,? said Ortiz, 46, who lives in a village where old pickup trucks and unleashed
dogs share dirt roads. ?How are people going to make a living??
It will be hard, Ortiz says, to stop his sons ? ages 22, 18 and 16 ? from illegally crossing the border to join relatives in Los Angeles.
For many of its 82 miles the canal's green waters trace the U.S.-Mexico border, running through sand dunes and verdant fields to California's Imperial
Valley, where it is the lifeblood for 500,000 acres of U.S. farmland.
The project to line 23 miles of the canal is slated to begin this summer and be completed in 2008. Project managers expect that the refit canal will
capture enough water for 135,000 new homes, mostly in San Diego and its suburbs.
The deal is not, however, ironclad. A group of Mexicali farmers and businesses has sued in federal court in Las Vegas to stop construction; a hearing
is scheduled April 24.
Nearly 3,000 acres in Mexico depend entirely on the All-American, according to the Mexicali Economic Development Council. California also relies on
water the canal siphons from the Colorado River as one of the West's major water sources winds from the Rocky Mountains to the Gulf of Mexico.
For years, water consumption spurred by breakneck growth in Southern California prompted Western states to complain they weren't getting their share.
The resolution was a water-redistribution deal that included the $225 million lining project, which will ease some of the pinch California feels from
being able to gulp less water from the Colorado.
Mexico already gets 489 billion gallons of Colorado River water each year. Supporters of the lining project say that that should suffice ? that the
canal's seepage is water Mexico isn't entitled to get.
?We don't mind sharing, but enough is enough,? said Stella Mendoza, who serves on the board of the Imperial Irrigation District, which oversees the
canal and solicited construction bids last month.
Colorado River water first flowed to California's arid southeast in 1901 on the Alamo Canal, which dipped into Mexico. California farmers soon decided
they needed a canal completely within the United States, leading to completion of the All-American in 1942.
Mexicans remember fishing on the Alamo in the 1970s. Now it's a bone-dry ditch ? full of old tires, empty jugs, soda cans and carcasses of dogs, cats
and cows ? that winds around sleepy villages in the Mexicali Valley.
Farmers aren't the only Mexicans fretting about the concrete casing. Opponents say lost seepage threatens about a dozen hidden lagoons in Mexicali
enjoyed by outdoor lovers and hunters.
Critics also say migrants may die crossing the canal because the concrete lining will deprive desperate swimmers of tall grasses to grab. While the
canal appears calm, migrants who cram onto inflatable rafts can be swept away by a fierce undercurrent.
Nine people died in the canal last year, down from 29 in 2001, according to the Imperial County coroner's office.
The drop tracked a shift in border crossings to Arizona, and deaths could rise if more migrants return to crossing in California. To prevent such
deaths, crews will build ladders 750 feet apart on both sides of the concrete lining.
While Mexican farmers protest the project most loudly, fearing that to recover lost water they'll have to dig deeper wells and pay higher electricity
bills, there is surprising resistance in one California border town. The city council of Calexico, Calif., voted in January to oppose the project,
echoing the opinion of some Imperial Valley farmers.
?I'm a farmer and those guys are farmers,? said Tom Brundy, 49, a Calexico farmer who sends his four children to a private Catholic school in
Mexicali. ?I'd hate to have it happen to me.?