Amador County – A Sacramento Superior Court ruled Monday in favor of Foothill Conservancy’s suit against East Bay Municipal Utility District and its long-term water management plan to expand Pardee Reservoir.

Judge Timothy J. Frawley awarded a writ of mandate on three claims made by the Foothill Conservancy, including that the District’s Environmental Impact Report “fails to adequately describe and mitigate the potentially significant impacts on cultural and recreational resources that would result if the Mokelumne River is inundated by expansion of the Pardee Reservoir.”

The judge also ruled that “the EIR fails to adequately identify and mitigate the potentially significant safety impacts due to elimination of emergency evacuation routes.” Frawley also ruled that “the EIR’s alternatives analysis is deficient because it eliminated the Los Vaqueros Reservoir project and failed to consider a reasonable range of alternatives to the Regional Upcountry water supply components.”

The writ commanded that East Bay MUD “set aside its certification of the EIR and all related project approvals based on (California Environmental Quality Act) violations” and “prepare, circulate, and certify a legally adequate EIR.”

Foothill Conservancy Executive Director Chris Wright said the “judge basically agreed with a lot of what we were saying.”

Frawley in the ruling said the “EIR failed to adequately identify potentially significant impacts due to the possible expansion of Pardee Reservoir,” and “as a result, the District’s Board was given an erroneous view of the potential environmental impacts for the Enlarge Pardee Reservoir component. This improperly skewed the EIR’s alternatives analysis.”

Wright said the Conservancy also argued that the District should take a better look at the Los Vaqueros Reservoir project, where Contra Costa Water District is working to expand its off-site reservoir. The Conservancy alleged that the “District improperly excluded the Los Vaqueros as a potentially feasible alternative.”

Frawley agreed, saying “an EIR is required to ensure that all reasonable alternatives to a proposed project are thoroughly assessed by the responsible official. Therefore, an EIR must describe a range of reasonable alternatives.”

Frawley wrote that East Bay MUD’s “decision to omit the Los Vaqueros Reservoir project” and “exclude the project from consideration in the District’s program EIR is not supported by substantial evidence in the record.” The District rejected the Los Vaqueros project, in part, for a lack of details on the project, and partners. The judge pointed out that the same could be said of all of East Bay MUD’s “Preferred Portfolio” in its 2040 Master Plan. Among those is that the “configuration of the Enlarge Pardee Reservoir component is not determined. Neither is the operation scheme,” which the plan said will “depend on the engineering design and the participants involved.”

“In short,” Frawley wrote, “all of the District’s ‘preferred’ water supply components are shrouded in as much, or more, uncertainty than the Los Vaqueros Reservoir project.”

Story by Jim Reece

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