Opinion ID: 1427784
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: concerning the errors of utah power's ways

Text: In its briefing to this Court, Utah Power made a number of factual allegations which have not yet been held up to the truth-seeking light of trial. Despite their lack of finality and the fact that the district court has yet to consider most of the evidence in the context of a trial (keep in mind the procedural posture of this case: The landowners are appealing from the effective dismissal of several substantive theories, not from a judgment entered subsequent to trial) these factual allegations were made and apparently considered by this Court. It therefore behooves someone to refute them. One such set of allegations derives from Utah Power's argument that one benefit to the landowners of the Bear River-Bear Lake system is the availability of additional irrigation water for reclaimed agricultural lands. Utah Power Brief at 2. However, Utah Power fails to disclose the direct primary benefit to it of millions of dollars of earned profits from hydropower generation. Despite Utah Power's omission, this Court should not ignore the plain economic motivation for which Utah Power's series of hydropower generating plans and related water reservoirs and control works were originally constructed and continue to be operated. [6] Utah Power's attempt to divert attention from its business purpose of generating and selling electricity for profit by cloaking its activities under a mantle of alleged benevolent service to irrigation, recreation, and fisheries interests, is a mere tactic designed to support its specious balancing contention. Utah Power contends that how it makes management and operational decisions regulating the storage level in Bear Lake, including alleged reliance on snow survey and forecast runoff reports and other data, supports the reasonableness of its operations. Utah Power Brief at 2. It characterizes the Circuit's finding that the 1983-1986 spring runoff was unusually heavy as an understatement, while conceding it to be accurate. Id. Utah Power then amplifies the record by selectively quoting certain statistics to support its alleged reasonable operations. The Circuit omitted any specific statistics in its factual statement and findings. Utah Power's select statistics should have been regarded by this Court as outside the factual record. More importantly, however, Utah Power's statistics are grossly incomplete and misleading for several reasons, and illustrate the maxim that anything can be proven with statistics and their selective manipulation. Utah Power sought to create the impression that the unusually heavy runoff was solely responsible for the flooding discharges, and thus eliminate its own significant role in creating the problem. Utah Power's statistics failed to advise the Court that there was more than adequate storage capacity which could have held all of the actual runoff which occurred in the flood years 1983-1986, if Utah Power had regulated the lake level consistently with the irrigation reserve provided by the Compact. Utah Power refused to do so. In addition, Utah Power's statistics failed to advise the Court that in each flood year, even prior to spring runoff commencing, Utah Power had allowed the lake to be at 5919 feet or higher, far in excess of the irrigation reserve of 5914.61 feet set by the Compact. Utah Power's statistics failed to advise the Court that significantly less flooding and damage would have occurred if Utah Power had met its own target lake level elevation of 5918 feet in the flood years 1983-1986. It failed or refused to do so. Utah Power's statistics failed to advise the Court that Bear Lake is functionally full at a 5923 foot level. Utah Power's failure to operate consistently with the irrigation reserve level, or even to meet its corporate-set 5918 foot target level, converged with the unusually heavy (higher than average) runoff to create the necessity for Utah Power to make flooding discharges. Utah Power's statistics also fail to advise the Court that the arbitrary maintenance of elevations higher than required by the irrigation reserve provided in the Bear River Compact was solely discretionary on the part of Utah Power. Utah Power failed to advise the Court that its corporate operating policy establishing a target lake elevation of 5918 feet posed a risk of flooding downstream landowners one year in every five according to its own prior risk analysis study done in 1971. [7] See Appendix A, which is the cover memo and pages 3 through 5 of the Bear River-Bear Lake operating criteria prepared by Utah Power in October of 1971, after the initial flooding which ultimately gave rise to the litigation in Kunz I. Utah Power conceded at trial that its 5918 foot corporate-set target lake elevation was exceeded prior to spring runoff in each year from 1983 through 1986. From these facts it is evident that the effect of lake elevations higher than Utah Power's optional Minimum Power Release Elevation of 5918 feet, or the Compact's irrigation reserve level of 5914.61 feet, placed the risk of flooding damage squarely on downstream landowners in years of higher-than-average or unusually heavy runoff. Yet Utah Power did not tell the Court that all historic runoff statistics compiled since the facilities were constructed in 1917 establish that no flooding in any year through 1986 would have occurred, if Utah Power had operated consistently with the 5914.61 foot irrigation reserve level. It is clear that Utah Power has declined to operate the system in a manner which would be consistent with the Bear River Compact. This is evidenced by the adoption of a Minimum Power Release Elevation level of 5918 feet as company policy, despite the fact that the level, on its face, did not comply with the Compact. In the unusually heavy successive runoff years of 1971-1972 and 1983-1986, even a reduction to the 5918 foot level was not achieved. Thus the runoff could not be contained, nor could discharges of water beyond the banks of Bear River, with resultant flooding, be avoided. Historically, the Bear River drainage has been known to be highly variable as to quantity and timing of spring runoff, even more than most watersheds. This is due to extremes in geographic features, including elevations, and to the variability of weather patterns. See, Kunz I, 526 F.2d at 502. Utah Power knows that actual runoff in prior years has been two to two-and-one half times above projected runoff. That situation occurred in 1971-1972, and was litigated in Kunz I. Thus Utah Power's assertion that it was surprised when the same level of runoff occurred in 1983-1986, lacks credibility. What happened in 1971-1972 and again in 1983-1986, could hardly have come as a surprise or have been unforeseeable. The fact is Utah Power simply chose to operate on the basis that if heavy runoffs occurred the risk would be transferred to landowners below Bear Lake. Utah Power's balancing of competing interests argument is simply used to justify the low priority Utah Power gives to meeting the flood control duty it clearly had after Kunz I. It is not surprising that the interests of recreation and fisheries, which allegedly favor a high lake level, directly parallel Utah Power's hydropower and irrigation interests. Despite Utah Power's lip service to balancing the various interests, the objective facts demonstrate that Utah Power operated the system, as a matter of corporate policy and after study and deliberation, with little or no regard to the flood control duty owed to downstream landowners. Utah Power's assertion at page 4 of its brief that in 1983, when the tremendous and unforecasted runoff occurred, Utah Power stored as much of the runoff as was physically possible, begs the issue. The amount of water it is physically possible to store varies depending on Utah Power's advance planning and regulation of the lake level. Utah Power's attempt to distinguish between stored and bypassed water is a distinction without a difference. Utah Power undertook to and did divert, manage, and control all of the natural flow of Bear River. It diverted all such water by Stewart Dam into its regulatory system and artificial works and attempted to control and manage storage and releases, whether bypassed or not. In fact, Utah Power made controlled discharges from its diversion works which released combined stored and bypassed water in excessive quantities into the natural downstream channel of Bear River, which in turn overflowed the banks onto Landowners' lands. The Circuit's Order so states. Utah Power has the responsibility, both legal and moral, to ensure that discharges do not exceed the carrying capacity of the natural channel. This responsibility flows from Utah Power's voluntary undertaking to dam and control the water; its exclusive control, and the Landowners' dependent position and total lack of control; the lack of flood easements or other legal authorization for overflows of released water from the natural channel; and the plain language of the Dietrich Decree which limits Utah Power's discharges to the natural channel. Utah Power insists the Dietrich Decree gives Utah Power the right but not the obligation to divert and store up to 5500 cfs from Bear River (an amount greater than any historic natural flow). Such an argument deliberately ignores the plain language of the Dietrich Decree, as construed in Johnson v. Utah Power & Light, 215 F.2d 814, 816 (9th Cir.1954), and Gossner v. Utah Power & Light Co., 612 P.2d 337 (Utah 1980). Those cases held that Utah Power has no right to discharge water from its system into the natural channel of Bear River in amounts which overflow the banks. Johnson and Gossner directly contradict Utah Power's construction of the Decree, and this Court should have followed the holding in those cases. The Compact represents the balance achieved through the legislative process and through interstate negotiations between Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah. It was approved by Congress. The Compact's balance is consistent with the Dietrich Decree, which is the source of Utah Power's water rights on the Bear River, and with the Idaho statutory and common law governing water rights, trespass and nuisance. Utah Power disregarded the balance of the Compact arrived at through this process. Utah Power concludes it is free to operate at any higher level it deems in its exclusive wisdom is appropriate. The higher lake level Utah Power deems appropriate not surprisingly favors its own interests and is consistent with its perceived duties to recreation and fisheries, thereby sacrificing the legal flood control duty which would protect the Landowners. Utah Power diverts at its Stewart Dam the entire flow of the Bear River, the major river system in a several thousand square mile drainage area covering parts of three states. The size, degree and magnitude of Utah Power's artificial works, and its control of all flows in Bear River, plus the substantial hydropower generated as a result of harnessing the entire natural flow of the Bear River, clearly distinguish the Bear River system from the irrigation and drainage systems which have formed the factual backdrop for so many of the Idaho cases which deal with the damage occasioned by the release of stored or managed water. This is a distinction not only of degree, but of kind, and it therefore merits the adoption of rules which take into account the unique facts which set such large operations apart from other systems.