SAN FRANCISCO
(AP) -- The state Supreme Court on Monday sided with a group of
farmers that challenged an agreement between farmers and cities
to limit water use in the parched Mojave River Basin.
In its ruling,
which is sure to make it more difficult for California's booming
cities to get the water they need to grow, the court upheld a
ruling that invalidated part of the carefully negotiated 1993
water pact.
The court
said agreements between cities and farmers cannot automatically
supersede the state's 150-year-old water policy, which favors
landowners with the oldest water rights. In California, the farms
were generally there first, and depend on irrigation to grow crops
on eight million acres of otherwise arid land.
''This preserves
the farmers' position at basically the top of the water chain,''
said Robert E. Dougherty, who represented the seven alfalfa and
dairy farmers who refused to join in the Mojave water pact. ''Cities
do take a back seat.''
The court's
decision could make it nearly impossible for farmers and municipalities
to agree on wide-reaching water-restriction measures during a
drought, said Frederick A. Fudacz, a lawyer for the Apple Valley
Ranches Water Co. who argued for the cities.
''I think
it's going to make it much more difficult to solve these water-right
lawsuits,'' Fudacz said.
The dissident
farmers argued that they should be entitled to keep using the
amount of water they've enjoyed for decades on and under their
land as long as it's not sold or wasted. The high court agreed,
saying the pact's restrictions failed to take into account the
farmers' legal water rights.
The Mojave
River, which flows mostly underground, is the only natural source
of water for Barstow and most high desert communities in San Bernardino
County. But the water has been pumped out faster than rainfall
can replenish it in recent years, causing the water table downstream
to plunge.
Water officials
in the growing desert communities of Adelanto, Apple Valley, Barstow,
Hesperia, Victorville and other outlying areas forecast that the
basin might dry up altogether without use restrictions, so they
came up with a broad plan.
Litigation
between several Mojave-area cities and about 1,000 farmers and
other landowners was put on hold. Two years later, in 1993, they
reached an accord that required each city and farmer to reduce
usage a certain amount in accordance with water availability.
A Superior
Court judge signed off on the deal in 1996, saying that allocating
water based on legal priorities would be ''extremely difficult,
if not impossible.''
But seven
of the farmers objected and kept litigating.
An appellate
court reversed the lower court judge and the California Supreme
Court agreed with that ruling.
''The impacts
for California are enormous,'' Scott Slater, a Santa Barbara lawyer
and water expert. ''This case suggests that farmers cannot automatically
lose their rights.''
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