San Luis & Delta Mendota Water Authority v. United States Department of the Interior

ORDER DENYING PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR LIMITED DISCOVERY WITHOUT PREJUDICE

I. INTRODUCTION

Plaintiffs San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority and one of the Authority’s member districts, Westlands Water District (collectively, “Plaintiffs”) filed this action for declaratory and injunctive relief in June 2011, against the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and a number of federal officials (collectively, “Federal Defendants”). 1 Plaintiffs sought to prevent the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (“Reclamation”) from temporarily reducing the volume of water pumped and exported from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay (referred to as the Bay-Delta) to the Delta-Mendota-Canal, at the C.W. “Bill” Jones Pumping Plant (“Jones Pumping Plant”) near Tracy, California. The Jones Pumping Plant is part of the operations of the Central Valley Project, a major federal water project in California. 2 The export pumping reduction was recommended by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service *1050 (“FWS”) and other fish agencies. Reclamation directed the pumping reduction through a change order dated June 6, 2011 issued to the…