San Luis Unit Food Producers v. United States

Today we consider whether farmers and farming entities (collectively, “Farmers”) that irrigate their land using water from the San Luis Unit of the Central Valley Project — -the nation’s largest reclamation project — may maintain a claim under the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”) to compel the United States Bureau of Reclamation (“the Bureau”) to provide the Farmers’ irrigation districts with more water than it is currently providing. The Farmers argue that several federal statutes require the Bureau to provide irrigators with sufficient irrigation water to satisfy the Farmers’ needs before delivering water to any other party for any other purpose. The district court granted summary judgment in favor of the Bureau on several grounds, including that the Bureau does not have a statutory duty to release a certain amount of water for irrigation and that, consequently, the Farmers’ claims did not satisfy the final agency action requirement of the APA. Although the district court discussed this issue in terms of sovereign immunity, we resolve the case slightly differently.

Pursuant to the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Norton v. Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance…