Submitted by Lloyd Carter on Mon, 09/03/2012 - 14:55.

Fishing and conservation groups have won the first round in their attempt to get state and federal officials to follow water quality laws and comply with the Clean Water Act. For years West side Irrigators have been dumping their selenium pollution into the San Joaquin River and SF Bay Delta Estuary without required pollution control permits.

On Friday August 31, 2012, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District if California ruled this selenium-polluted ground water being discharged into the sloughs, San Joaquin River and San Francisco Bay Delta Estuary is subject to the pollution control provisions of the Clean Water Act. Background: Since 1996 San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority and USBR have been allowed to discharge Selenium into the sloughs, San Joaquin River and Delta in excess of Clean Water Act water quality protection standards without required permits. Recently in 2010 Western San Joaquin Valley growers sought and obtained another approximate decade long extension. The dischargers argued they do not need to comply with the Clean Water Act pollution control measures because they are exempted under an irrigated return flow provision.

The court denied this reasoning. Selenium bioaccumulates in plant and animal tissue causing deformities and birth defects. After cows were found to be dying and deformities in migratory birds and ducks, Secretary Hodel feared that the federal government would be sued for killing wildlife in direct violation of the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act and closed the drains from the west side of the San Joaquin Valley into Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge in 1985. Despite this closure, irrigators sought and obtained a “temporary” permit to go around water pollution control laws in 1996.

This series of exemptions is being challenged in federal court. Similar to the New York Times story, February 2012, on the two headed fish in Idaho caused from the discharge of selenium waste into a stream in Idaho, [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/science/earth/mutated-trout-raise-new-concerns-over-selenium.html?pagewanted=all ] the San Joaquin Valley west side irrigators also tried to hide the 2008 deformed embryo found at this project site in California. [See http://calsport.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Groups-Sue-Feds-West... http://calsport.org/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Selenium-Deformed-Em...

Here are the contacts: Steve Volker [attorney] 510 496 0600 Zeke Grader [PCFFA] 415 606 5140 [cell] Steve Evans [Friends of the River] 916 706 2205 [cell] Felix Smith [916] 966 2081 [former USFWS employee who documented the selenium poisoning of wildlife at Kesterson National Wildlife Refuge as a result of Westlands and SLDMWA discharges of selenium tainted groundwater and drainage water in 1983] Bill Jennings [209] 464 5067 cell California Sportfishing Protection Alliance