Water ruling says Texas violated ESA

In a stunning ruling that is bound to affect water rights, a federal judge has found the state of Texas was responsible for the deaths of 23 endangered whooping cranes and now must make amends. Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack ruled Monday in Corpus Christi that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to manage freshwater flows from the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers to the birds' Gulf Coast habitats in winter 2008-09. The TCEQ said it may challenge the 124-page decision. Jim Blackburn, lead counsel for the Aransas Project, which sued the state, said the case sets a precedent in dispelling the notion that riverflows into coastal bays constitute “wasted water.” In a stunning ruling that is bound to affect water rights, a federal judge has found the state of Texas was responsible for the deaths of 23 endangered whooping cranes and now must make amends. Senior U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack ruled Monday in Corpus Christi that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to manage freshwater flows from the Guadalupe and San Antonio rivers to the birds' Gulf Coast habitats in winter 2008-09. The TCEQ said it may challenge the 124-page decision. Jim Blackburn, lead counsel for the Aransas Project, which sued the state, said the case sets a precedent in dispelling the notion that riverflows into coastal bays constitute “wasted water.” “Inactions and refusal to act by the TCEQ defendants proximately caused an unlawful 'take' of at least 23 whooping cranes,” Jack said in her ruling, based on testimony presented at a December 2011 trial. She blocked the state from issuing new water permits on the rivers until assurances are in place that a conservation plan is implemented to balance the interests of water users with preservation of crane habitats...more  

The judge is a 1993 Clinton nominee.