A Superior Court judge has ordered Fontana Water Company to stop pumping water from a portion of the Rialto-Colton Basin until a new water year begins in October.
San Bernardino Superior Court Judge Bryan Foster issued a ruling last month in which he granted a request for preliminary injunction from the cities of Colton and Rialto and West Valley Water District and ordered Fontana Water Company to comply with the court’s 1961 decree, which was designed to maintain water levels in the Rialto-Colton Basin.
Water agencies have alleged that Fontana Water Company has been pumping three times its allotted share of water, under the 1961 degree.
Last week, Fontana Water Company tried to convince the court to prevent the preliminary injunction from taking effect. The court rejected Fontana Water Company’s arguments and ordered the company on March 20 to stop pumping from a portion of the Rialto-Colton Basin through Sept. 30, when the current water year ends.
The 1961 decree specifies how much water each agency can extract from a portion of the Rialto-Colton groundwater basin from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30 based on average groundwater levels. However, the more groundwater levels decline, the less agencies can legally extract from the groundwater basin.
The court noted that during this extended drought, “[w]ithout groundwater management, oversight and enforcement, ‘we will run out of groundwater’.” The court further recognized that the 1961 decree was an attempt to address historic overdraft in the basin and issued the injunction to enforce the terms of that decree.
The court’s ruling will require all parties to the 1961 decree to pump groundwater pursuant to the terms of that judgment until the current litigation about the Rialto-Colton Basin is completed.
The lawsuit, filed in 2013, alleges that Fontana Water Company and its parent company, El Monte-based San Gabriel Valley Water Company, have been extracting more than they are legally allowed to from both the Rialto-Colton groundwater basin and the neighboring San Bernardino Basin Area