RENO, Nev. (AP) - A federal judge denied a rural Nevada town’s request for an emergency order Friday to force the Trump administration to extend a comment period on plans to repair a 115-year-old irrigation canal after the coronarivus pandemic prompted cancellation of public meetings on the project.
The town of Fernley east of Reno says the Bureau of Reclamation’s plans to make the dirt canal safer would cut off seepage of water from the irrigation system into the groundwater aquifer tapped by local domestic wells that more than 450 residents rely on as their sole source of water.
The bureau replaced the March 24-25 meetings with a web site to gather comments on the project electronically. It said it also would accept comment by telephone and continue to field written comments that arrive beyond the close of the comment period that ends Monday.
U.S. District Judge Miranda Du ruled Friday in Reno there is no legal basis for the “extraordinary remedy” sought by Fernley.
“Reclamation decided in-person meetings were no longer appropriate,” she wrote. ”The court finds that decision was within Reclamation’s discretion.”
Fernley wanted her to order the bureau to accept comment until at least a month after Nevada’s governor lifts his emergency virus orders, including a prohibition on gatherings of more than nine people. It argued that many of those affected by the canal project are elderly, disabled and low-income residents least likely to have access to computers or sufficient skills to participate online.
It said the bureau’s refusal to grant an extension to the comment period - as the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management has done recently in similar situations - was an outrageous abuse of its authority in the face of a national emergency brought on by the pandemic.
The bureau said in court filings that it was following the same comment guidelines Gov. Steve Sisolak adopted in mid-March in response to the virus outbreak. Officials plan to repair the earthen canal that failed and flooded hundreds of homes in Fernley in 2008.
Du said the town has failed to meet any of the three legal elements it must prove - a clear and indisputable right to relief, that the government agency or official is violating a clear duty to act and that no adequate alternative remedy exists.
”None of the regulations Fernley relies on require that Reclamation extend a public comment period when extraordinary circumstances are present, nor do they require in-person public meetings on their face,” Du wrote in a seven-page opinion.
The dispute over the 45-day public comment period stemmed from the administration’s 2017 executive order intended to expedite - critics say short-circuit - environmental reviews that slow the approval of energy exploration, mine expansions and other development on federal lands.
Among other things, the bureau argues U.S. taxpayers own the water in the canal _not Fernley. The agency acknowledges its plans to line the dirt canal “will significantly reduce the seepage of surface water from the canal that artificially recharges the aquifers used by certain residents of Fernley for a domestic supply.”
”Fernley’s opposition is well known to Reclamation,” it said.
In a response filed Friday before the judge ruled, the town said it doesn’t oppose repairing the canal, only the alternative that would extend the new lining intended to fortify the earthen walls throughout the canal’s floor.
Fernely said the bureau’s “baffling intransigence” ignores the undisputed extraordinary nature of the current national emergency. It argued the ”outrageousness” of the bureau’s position is underscored by the extension of similar deadlines by the Forest Service and Bureau of Management as well as the fact the canal project “has no identified source of funding, and no established timeline for construction.”
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