Douglas Headrick, San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water DistrictSouthern California water agencies plan to sue over the Santa Ana Sucker.
A dozen Southern California water districts have announced their intent to sue the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for setting aside acreage the districts say is unnecessary to support the survival of a threatened fish, the Santa Ana Sucker.
“Water agencies are successfully conserving the sucker, and will continue to do so,” said Douglas Headrick, general manager of San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District. “Ironically, the Fish and Wildlife Service is hindering this positive environmental progress while destabilizing regional water supplies and the economy of much of inland Southern California, which depends on reliable, affordable water.”
The announcement, made earlier this week, is a response to a ruling that went into effect in January that added 1,026 acres to the sucker’s critical habitat. The total habitat is now more than 10,000 acres.
The wildlife service was sued in 2007 for not having set aside enough land for the sucker. So in 2009, the federal agency settled the case by promising to re-evaluate the land it had designated as critical habitat.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service must provide additional protection for this threatened species, based on the best available science,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the conservation groups that had sued the federal agency, in a press release after the settlement.
Some of the new area cited in Fish and Wildlife's ruling includes stream beds that do not currently have suckers in them, and which can dry out completely during the year.
Anderson said these areas are critical for the sucker, because they provide the gravel the sucker needs to survive. The gravel is pushed down river every year during big flows.
The new habitat also includes the Santa Ana River, which the sucker was named for.
The designation does not keep water agencies from using water in these areas, but it does mean they must consult with the federal agency before they do any work on new or existing projects in the habitat.
The Southern California agencies say their biggest worry is that they’ll have to use the water that currently goes to Riverside and San Bernardino counties to push gravel downstream for the suckers. They estimate that could affect the water supply of about 3 million people.
Jane Hendron, a spokeswoman for the federal agency, declined to comment on the specifics of the water agencies' concerns, citing pending litigation. But she did say there is a long history of litigation over this species, and that will likely continue.
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