It changes the scope of negotiations. Now all of a sudden the water-right holders have a chip in the game. Full Seattle Times story ESA ruling dries up Klamath irrigators hopes A federal judge in Eugene has ruled that growers in the Klamath Basin Project won't get water this year because two species of endangered sucker and the threatened Coho salmon need the water. The brigade will start at Veteran's Memorial Park, continue down Main Street and end with a rally at Modoc Field. Excess money will be turned over to the Klamath Water Users Association and will be used to help cover legal expenses of the water users.
Environmental groups file lawsuits all the time.
Suits are so common, and so many are tossed out by courts, no news media have reported on a Notice of Intent to Sue under the Endangered Species Act filed by several environmental groups against the Bureau of Reclamation and 11 BOR projects on the Snake River. But the Notice certainly has the attention of agriculture, because it comes on the heels of legal action by some of the same groups in the Klamath Basin Project. In the Klamath Basin, their legal action dried up about 200,000 acres of production agriculture this season, jeopardizing thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in the local economy. The stakes are even higher in the Snake River case. The projects serve about 1.6 million acres irrigated acres in Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.