Court Schedule:

May 3 9:00 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to hear oral argument.  William K. Nakamura Courthouse, 1010 Fifth Ave., Seattle, Washington, 7th Floor Courtroom (note: picture identification required to enter courthouse)

Links for Related Topics

1. -National Academies of Science: Columbia River Flows
   

1. -Weber Siphon
   

1. -Odessa Aquifers:  Water Mining
   

- Odessa Subarea Special Study DEIS

- U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

- Washington Dept of Ecology

Background

Known as the Lake Roosevelt Drawdown Project, the Bureau plans to withdraw water from the Columbia River, behind Grand Coulee Dam, and issue approximately 900 new water rights for irrigation, municipal and industrial use, and instream flow augmentation.  The Columbia River is already over-allocated - and inadequate streamflows are harming aquatic habitat, water quality, and salmon migration.

The legal challenge to the Bureau's decision to withdraw more water from the Columbia River is based on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the statute that requires federal agencies to take a hard look at the environmental impacts of their actions. The Bureau of Reclamation failed to consider cumulative and indirect impacts associated with the new water diversions.  For example, the Bureau is expanding a water pipe under I-90, called the Weber Siphon, that is 10 times the size of what is needed for the Lake Roosevelt Drawdown, but the Bureau failed to consider the foreseeable environmental impacts associated with future water diversions as a result of the significant increase in capacity.

The Columbia Basin Project is managed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.  The Project contains one of the world's largest dams, Grand Coulee Dam, and is also the nation's largest all-federal irrigation project.  The Bureau's efforts during the 1980s to expand the Project were found to be uneconomic and halted.  The Bureau is once again trying to withdraw more water from the Columbia River to expand federal irrigation.

CELP and Columbia Riverkeeper are represented by Chris Winter of the Crag Law Center in Portland and Sean Malone of Eugene, Oregon. Vision for Our Future (VFOF), a grass-roots tribal environmental group on the Colville Indian Reservation, is also an intervenor represented by Harold Shepherd.