On July 16, 2015, the
Alameda County Superior Court of California denied a motion for a preliminary
injunction against the California Department of Conservation seeking to vacate
the Aquifer
Exemption Compliance Schedule regulations adopted at the
end of this April. The California Department of Conservation adopted the
regulations on a temporary basis by emergency rulemaking.
On May 7, 2015, two
environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club, sued
the California Department of Conservation seeking to invalidate the Aquifer
Exemption Compliance Schedule Regulations allowing wastewater injections into
federal protected aquifers. This complaint arose from the Department
of Conservation’s letter sent to U.S. EPA in which the
Department of Conservation confessed to having “approved [in the past] UIC
projects in zones with aquifers lacking exemptions.”
On May 14, 2015, the
two environmental groups filed a motion
for preliminary injunction against the Aquifer Exemption
Regulations asking the Superior Court to order the Department of Conservation
to take appropriate measures to prohibit illegal well injections into protected
aquifers. In the decision denying the preliminary injunction, the Superior
Court stated that “the threat of [drinking water aquifers] contamination is
theorical.”
Further information on
the decision is available by searching for docket no. RG15769302 on the Alameda
County Superior Court of California website at:
Written by Chloe Marie - Research Fellow
07/20/2015
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