EDF is asking planners to compare the cost, environmental damage, and engineering requirements of building Shasta with other ways of providing the same benefits including unconventional ways. The need for comparisons such as EDF advocates will increase in the future. The rush to Western energy projects, creating new demand for scarce water, will add to pressures for additional water projects. Yet taxpayers are demanding less government spending. The California Supreme Court, under a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court order to reconsider its earlier dismissal of EDFs suit, reversed itself and ruled EDF's claim constitutionally proper and within state court jurisdiction.
Proceedings can now continue.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled for EDF that this huge Federal water program must meet both National Environmental Policy Act requirements and wildlife protection provisions of the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act. The program would divert scarce Western water from agriculture to energy industries. An appeal has been filed. Nevertheless, EDF's demonstration of the inadequacy of present controls and of better alternative methods advanced by several leading scientists and technical experts who testified for EDF may ultimately prevail, as growing pressure for energy development in the West places increasing stress on the Colorado River Basin. The present program focuses on phosphate removal.