“There’s been a welcome turn of events for Bring Back the Kern, the group that’s been trying to compel the city of Bakersfield to halt its ongoing, wholesale diversion of water from the Kern River.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, has filed an amicus brief with an appeals court in support of the pro-flow plaintiffs.
Last year, a coalition of environmental groups, led by Bring Back the Kern and Water Audit California, were granted their motion for a preliminary injunction requiring the city of Bakersfield to cease its practice of completely drying up the Kern River — in violation, they say, of the California Fish and Game code.
But a handful of agricultural water districts, served by the city’s diversions of water, appealed the trial court’s decision requiring that some water be left in the river. Bakersfield saw the result on Labor Day weekend, when the water diversion left thousands of fish to die on the dry riverbed.
Bonta’s friend of the court filing puts the state squarely behind the lawsuit against the city and its co-defendants…” [Read More]