IID due to respond to Abatti petition
EL CENTRO – Imperial Irrigation District will file its response today to local farmer Michael Abatti’s petition to the state Supreme Court to review an appellate court decision that overturned the majority of a 2017 ruling in his ongoing legal dispute with the district over water rights.
District spokesman Robert Schettler confirmed that once
IID files its response, Abatti’s attorneys have 10 days to file a reply. Meanwhile, the court has until Oct. 23 to accept or reject Abatti’s petition, unless the judges grant themselves a deadline extension of Nov. 22.
Observers do not expect the court to take all of the available time to render a decision.
Abatti’s attorney Cheryl Orr filed the petition Aug. 24. The document asks the court to review whether the judges with the Fourth District Court of Appeal were correct in overturning a 2017 Imperial County Superior Court ruling that linked water rights to land ownership. The appellate court acknowledged IID as the rights holder.
On Sept. 2, Imperial County Farm Bureau and Imperial Valley Water (IVH2O) submitted a joint amici curiae (friend of the court) letter in support of Abatti’s petition.
The two organizations, predominantly made up of local farmers, argue the Fourth District Court of Appeal ruling “will create legal and financial turmoil for holders of appropriative water rights throughout California.”
Appropriative rights apply to water that is diverted to property, as opposed to riparian rights, which apply to water naturally occurring – such as a river or spring – on a property.
Noting investments made by farmers in canals, drains, excavation, tile line installation and more, Farm Bureau and IVH20 said, “These investments were made based on the certain knowledge that California law recognized a permanent water right appurtenant to the land thus developed.”
The groups cite the 1980 U.S. Supreme Court case of Bryant v. Yellen as recognizing the appropriate rights of farmers.
“In a single stroke, the Fourth District declares that the water right is not a right to water but merely a right to ‘service,’” the letter to the court said.
“A right to service is meaningless to a farmer if it does not include the right to water,” the letter continued. “The result of this holding is that the landowners whose money and labor created the right have nothing more than other users have.”
On the other side the argument is the Imperial Valley Coalition for the Fair Sharing of Water, which represents a collection of local municipalities, business owners, landowners, organized labor and others.
Former county Supervisor Wally Leimgruber, who is one of that group’s more visible members, said the coalition “would take issue” with the “cavalier statement” in the opposition’s friend of the court letter that the appellate court undid previous case law regarding
water rights “in a single stroke.”
Leimgruber contended that characterization oversimplifies the appellate ruling. “The appellate judges wrote 106 pages of Colorado River water history, and quoted federal, and state law in their opinion,” he said. “Furthermore, the three appellate judges were unanimous in their decision.”