IID facing another likely suit from another Abatti
EL CENTRO — While one Abatti brother reportedly plans to take his long-standing quarrel with Imperial Irrigation District over water rights to the California Supreme Court, another one has prepared a claim against the district for revenue he said his business lost through reduced payouts in its water conservation program.
Tuesday’s IID Board of Directors meeting agenda includes a memorandum from its human resources department regarding a financial damages claim against the district by El Centro farmer Jimmy Abatti’s Madjac Farms Inc.
Madjac Farms’ attorney, Lee E. Hejmanowski, presented the claim for $319,401.60, plus attorney’s fees, to the district on Aug. 6. The claim stems from alleged damages that occurred as a result of cuts made to IID’s 2019 On-Farm Efficiency Conservation Program.
That program changes, which the Board of Directors approved in July 2019, cut the amount of money IID reimbursed farmers not under contract with its water conservation program. Traditionally, IID had been paying all farmers $285 per acre-foot for water conserved under the program, whether they were under contract or not.
However, because IID projected the amount of water saved would have exceeded its needs and the because the payments for that water would have exceeded the budget allocated to the program, the district persuaded the board to adopt a plan that would keep payments to contracted farmers (representing about 25,000 acre-feet) at $285, while slashing the rate paid to other farmers to $125 per acrefoot.
Madjac Farms’ claim states that decision represented a 56 percent reduction in the company’s expected reimbursement. Meanwhile, IID did not reduce its $51.3 million budget for reimbursements, the claim noted.
“The result of this deduction is that Madjac suffered significant losses though its conservation efforts that it would not have otherwise incurred,” the claim said.
The human resources memorandum to the
IID board for Tuesday’s meeting recommends that it reject the claim, which would give Madjac six months to file a civil suit to contest the matter.
Language in the claim indicated Madjac is prepared to do just that, nothing that the amount of the claim “exceeds the jurisdictional minimum for an unlimited civil case.”
Meanwhile, Jimmy Abatti’s brother, Michael, recently told the Calexico Chronicle through his attorney he plans to take his ongoing water rights suit against IID to the California Supreme Court.
On July 16, judges with the Fourth District Court of Appeals upheld a previous ruling from 2017 to strike down IID’s Equitable Distribution Plan. However, Michael Abatti, a former IID director, lost the bigger battle concerning water rights. Whereas Imperial County Superior Court Judge L. Brooks Anderholt ruled those rights are tied to land ownership, the appellate judges acknowledged IID as the rights holder.
The court denied Abatti’s petition to have the appeal reheard earlier this month. According to the Chronicle, Abatti hopes to file his case with the state Supreme Court by month’s end.