U.S. Water News Online
LAS VEGAS -- A federal appeals court has ordered an immediate halt to construction on a leaky section of an irrigation canal that delivers Colorado River water to farms in California's Imperial Valley.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ordered work on the All-American Canal, just north of the U.S.-Mexico border, to stop while an appeal is heard in a lawsuit filed to block the project.
The lawsuit was brought against the federal government in 2005 by environmentalists and agriculture interests in Mexico, who argued that farms and wildlife south of the border have come to depend on leakage from the canal.
A 23-mile section of the canal has leaked river water into a groundwater aquifer shared with Mexico for decades, and plaintiffs in the case claimed that farmers and wildlife south of the border now depended on the seepage.
Nevada water officials joined the government's side of the lawsuit, citing the importance of the canal work to interstate water agreements that help protect the state's share of the Colorado River.
"For a federal circuit to issue an injunction in a case like this is not unusual," said J.C. Davis, spokesman for the Southern Nevada Water Authority, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "However, we think the (federal) district court ruling is rationally based and expect it to be upheld."
In July, a federal judge in Las Vegas ruled that the canal project should be allowed to go forward, but the decision was appealed by the economic development council of Mexicali, Mexico, and the conservation groups Desert Citizens Against Pollution and Citizens United for Resources and the Environment.
The plaintiffs' lead attorney, R. Gaylord Smith, said the ruling "stops the bureaucratic steamroller that would have led to excavation of 25 million tons of desert habitat."
Construction was scheduled to start in a matter of days.
If built, the $210 million project is expected to prevent billions of gallons of Colorado River water from seeping from the 78-year-old canal each year.
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