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Western States Water Council Legal Committee Sioux Falls, South Dakota May 3, 2007 . The State of California has been sued by several NGO's, including CALSPA, a sport fishing group, alleging that we did not have take permits under our Endangered Species Act for operation of our state water project diversions. They asked the judge to enjoin us from diverting any water, and with a 60-day deadline. We were not able to get the trial judge to change his mind and so we lost that round. We are planning an appeal. At the same time, we are going another route regarding an administrative decision. Our Governor has said "the pumps will not stop in 60-days." Montana John Tubbs: I'm sure Jack Stults has reported on the Trout Unlimitedv. DNRC supreme court ruling. We just had legislation passed this year that now addresses the ground water and surface water connection. There's a coalition of cities essentially saying we will work with you for a time period, but we ma.y litigate an issue involving exempted well provisions. We failed to narrow the exemption during the le:gislative process this year. Rapid growth is occurring in the cities at the same time that point source discharge requirements are ratcheting up treatment costs for communities. Therefore, it is becoming more affordable to live outside the cities, but that in turn is then causing more growth outside the communities. They're pretty much fed up with putting so much money into wastewater treatment plants while uncontrolled growth occurs. The State of Montana may be forced into growth planning and growth control issues. Texas Weir Labatt: I sit on the Texas Water Development Board and the city of Dallas has filed a lawsuit . against the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service (FWS) on an issue involving a proposed reservoir site in ea.st Texas. A reservoir called Fastrill i~ the Dallas Fortworth area has been opposed by a lot of people in east Texas. It's controversial within the state, but it's part of our state water plan that proposed 19 reservoir siites. The FWS, without any kind of public process, and without any notice, decided to put a mitigation area right in the middle of that reservoir site, which basically means if it were to be upheld long-term, it would preclude that site from being a reservoir site. It's in the federal court right now. Wyoming Pat Tyrrell: There's a little contest going on between Wyoming and Montana that started the end of January. It involves the Yellowstone River Compact, but only two tributaries, the Tongue and the Powder. It generally involves administration of pre-compact verses post compact rights. It also involves depletion verses diversion provisions in the compact and groundwater that is produced in Wyoming for coal bed natural gas. The briefs are out there. That original action was filed at the end of January. Wyoming n~sponded about the end of March and Montana responded about the middle of April and that's where it sits. Stay tuned. Idaho Norm Semanko: There have been three decisions of interest by our Idaho Supreme Court since our last meeting. The first one involves the ownership of stock water rights that stems out of our Snake River Basin adjudication. Notwithstanding the federal governments argument that "he who owns the land should own the stock water rights," the supreme court found that the person who owns the cattle should own the . stock water rights. 8