Bay Institute v. United States
Opinion
Lead Opinion
ORDER AND AMENDED MEMORANDUM *
ORDER
The memorandum disposition filed on June 3, 2003, is amended as follows:
(1) The first sentence of Paragraph 5 should be deleted and replaced with: “The district court erred in concluding that Interior lacks, discretion to refrain from crediting the amount of Project yield actually used for any (b)(2) purpose against the designated 800,000 acre feet of Project yield. To hold otherwise would defeat the primary purpose for which the 800,000 acre feet were designated-flsh, wildlife, and habitat restoration.”
(2) The final sentence of Paragraph 5 should be deleted and replaced with: “If Interior were required to deduct some or all the water it uses for water quality and Endangered Special Act purposes from the (b)(2) dedication, the water needed for im *639 plementation of the Improvement Act’s restoration mandate could be relegated to a secondary role, or perhaps no role at all. Such a scenario would directly conflict with the Interior’s mandate to give effect to the hierarchy of purposes established in Section 3406(b)(2).”
AMENDED MEMORANDUM
This case involves the administration by the Department of the Interior (“Interior”) of water in…