Best Best & Krieger News Feed

Appellate Court Again Sides with BB&K Client in Groundwater Rights Dispute

14 Jul 2016 00:00:00 -0800

On behalf of the City of Santa Maria, Best Best & Krieger LLP Managing Partner Eric Garner and Partner Jeffrey Dunn secured an appellate victory in a long-running groundwater rights dispute. In an opinion certified for publication by the Sixth District Court of Appeal, handed down June 24, 2016, the court held that a lower court was correct to quiet title to a groundwater basin for a group of landowners.

The landowners unsuccessfully asserted that, for the trial court to quiet title, it must have quantified the proportionate prescriptive right to the pumped groundwater as to each property owner. The Appellate Court rejected the argument, finding that the quantification was unnecessary at the time of judgment — as the basin was not in overdraft. However, should there be future periods of overdraft, then the court could consider a quantification of each landowner’s groundwater right.

The opinion follows a 2012 published opinion that upheld the City’s prescriptive right to groundwater and court-imposed groundwater management plan by the City of Santa Maria and other groundwater users. The two decisions provide guidance to California courts as to how to allocate increasingly scarce groundwater supplies.

The case is City of Santa Maria et al v. Richard E. Adam, H041133

Antelope Valley Groundwater Adjudication Settles

21 Jan 2016 00:00:00 -0800

Best Best & Krieger LLP is pleased to announce the trial court judgment in the largest groundwater pumping rights case ever in California and perhaps in United States history. After 16 years of litigation involving approximately 70,000 landowners, including two separate classes, Judge Jack Komar (Ret.) has signed a judgment that determines who has the right to pump water from the Antelope Valley groundwater basin and establishes a long-term sustainable management plan. The litigation was complex not only because of the number of parties and the size of the area, but due to the fact that the U.S. government, as the largest landowner in the region, was a party to this State Court proceeding.

A team of BB&K attorneys, led by Managing Partner Eric L. Garner and Partner Jeffrey V. Dunn, represented the County of Los Angeles Waterworks District No. 40 in the adjudication, which involved anyone who had a claim to use water from the groundwater basin. The first complaint in what would become a consolidated complex proceeding known as the Antelope Valley Groundwater Cases was filed in Riverside County Superior Court on Oct. 29, 1999.

The goal of the adjudication was to bring management to the basin and to limit further subsidence. This judgment is a means of ensuring the basin will now be sustainably managed.

For more than 60 years, more water has been pumped out of the groundwater basin than is naturally replenished. This has caused subsidence, which literally means that the ground has been sinking. In the 1990s, the subsidence was so bad that it led to a crack in a runway at Edwards Air Force Base.

The Judgment allows, anyone who was a party to the case to pump from the basin, although there may be charges for pumping depending on a parties’ prior pumping and some pumping is subject to the watermaster’s approval.

The court will maintain continuing jurisdiction over the basin, and five watermaster board members will administer the basin in conjunction with the court. One of the watermasters will represent District 40, which is the Valley’s largest retail water supplier with more than 200,000 people.

BB&K, and, specifically Garner and Dunn, is the only law firm in California history to have represented the lead party in two different groundwater adjudications — this one and the Santa Maria groundwater adjudication, which ended in 2012 with an appellate court decision that case resulted in an important victory for public water suppliers.

Attorney Fees Awarded Following Successful CEQA Lawsuit

15 Sep 2015 00:00:00 -0800

In the wake of a successful California Environmental Quality Act lawsuit on behalf of the City of Shafter, a team of Best Best & Krieger LLP attorneys secured a $185,000 post-judgment attorneys’ fees award. Attorneys Jason Ackerman, Fernando Avila and Jennifer Lynch represented Shafter in its CEQA lawsuit that challenged Kern Delta Water District’s proposal to shift a diversion of water historically diverted north of the Kern River to south of the river.

The BB&K attorneys began representing Shafter in 2012 when the Kern Delta Water District was attempting to adopt an environmental impact report for the Kern River Allocation Plan. The Plan called for the diversion of approximately 33,000 acre-feet of water.

On behalf of Shafter, the BB&K team argued that the EIR failed to analyze the groundwater impacts, the short- and mid-term impacts related to land subsidence and the impacts outside the project area – particularly how the groundwater basins that serve Shafter would be depleted.

In a ruling last year, a Ventura County Superior Court judge sided with Shafter on virtually all the arguments. The attorneys’ fees award followed.

Two Southern California Water Districts Win Federal Case Involving Camp Pendleton

05 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles _ A federal judge yesterday ruled in favor of two Southern California water districts in a case that involved breach of contract and water rights claims brought against them by the U.S. government and a neighboring water district.

The 120-page ruling issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Consuelo B. Marshall ends years of legal action and disputes over the Santa Margarita River watershed, a large watershed that serves thousands of residents in Riverside and San Diego counties.

“The case resolves years of litigation and puts to rest a lot of issues that have been in contention for a very long time,” said Piero Dallarda, one of the attorneys for Best Best & Krieger who tried the case during a nine-week trial in 2008. The firm represented Rancho California Water District.

The judge found, among other things, that the plaintiffs, the United States Marine Corps Base at Camp Pendleton and the Fallbrook Public Utility District, failed to prove damages in their case against Temecula-based Rancho California Water District and Perris-based Eastern Municipal Water District.

The judge also found that the water management practices of Rancho California Water District did not endanger in any way the water supply at Camp Pendleton, as the plaintiffs had alleged.

“In summary, plaintiffs have not proven they are entitled to relief under their water rights claims, their breach of contract claims, or any other claims asserted at the trial of this matter,” Marshall wrote in her ruling.

Specifically, the judge found that Rancho California Water District did not breach the 1990 contract involving the amount of treated wastewater it sends into the river’s watershed, which flows downstream to Camp Pendleton. The Marine base uses the water from the river’s watershed as its water supply.

In the lawsuit filed in 2003, the plaintiffs had claimed the districts had breached the contract to place two million gallons of water a day into the river. The San Diego Water Quality Control Board had granted Rancho California Water District a permit to conduct a pilot project for five years but later denied the district a permanent permit.

Instead, the district intermittently sent its treated water in a pipeline to the Santa Ana River, where another pipeline takes it to the Pacific Ocean.

“We were able to show the judge that the district did its utmost to do everything it could to make this contract work and manages its water resources well,” Dallarda said.

The ruling prevents the defendants from having to spend $300 million to buy additional water sources for Camp Pendleton or to build a desalination plant sought by the base to remove the salt from the water in the river basin.