[00:00:01] Speaker 04:
Okay, this is a time set for argument in case 25-588, United States versus California State Water Resources Control Board. Good morning, Mr. Turner.

[00:00:10] Speaker 02:
Good morning.

[00:00:12] Speaker 02:
May it please the court. Frederick Turner for the United States. I'd like to reserve five minutes for rebuttal time.

[00:00:19] Speaker 02:
The United States has waited seven years to have its intergovernmental immunity claim adjudicated in federal court.

[00:00:26] Speaker 02:
For the last two and a half of those years, The claim has languished because of the district courts erroneous decision that the claim is not potentially right.

[00:00:37] Speaker 02:
This court should reverse that decision.

[00:00:40] Speaker 02:
My time today I plan to address 2 points.

[00:00:44] Speaker 02:
First the United States is intergovernmental immunity claim against the state water resources control board is potentially right because it is fit for judicial resolution. As the district court held The plan is causing hardship to the Bureau of Reclamation.

[00:01:05] Speaker 02:
The board's arguments cannot rescue the district court's erroneous decision.

[00:01:10] Speaker 02:
The board presents this case as a complicated matter that is not ripe for the federal courts.

[00:01:16] Speaker 02:
Managing water quality in the Bay Delta is certainly a dynamic and complex issue, but the thrust of the United States' claim is simple.

[00:01:26] Speaker 02:
The amended plan issued in 2018 has singled out the Bureau of Reclamation for less favorable treatment compared to other water users and dischargers.

[00:01:37] Speaker 02:
As it did in 2021, when this court reversed the district court's partial stay under Colorado River, this court should allow the United States' claim to proceed.

[00:01:47] Speaker 04:
So the district court actually agreed with you on a lot of points, but where it got hung up was on this idea that we really need to have more proceedings to be able to put in context, I guess, whether this rule is really discriminatory in a more global sense. So how do you address that?

[00:02:04] Speaker 02:
Thank you, Your Honor. Yes, it's true the court did agree with us on the hardship factor as well as whether administrative proceedings would be interfered with. However, in terms of factual development, The government's position is that no further factual development is needed at this juncture.

[00:02:23] Speaker 02:
The terms of the amended plan are discriminatory on their face. The court need look no further than the amended plan. For example, on page 409 to 410 of the excerpts of record, it makes clear that the Bureau of Reclamation objective for electrical conductivity, which is usually referred to as E.C., is 0.7 from April through August and 1.0 EC for the remainder of the year.

[00:02:53] Speaker 04:
But the district court seemed to think, well, look, don't we need to know about how other people are going to be treated in these ultimate proceedings to be able to assess whether this facially discriminatory rule really, I guess, affects you in a material way?

[00:03:10] Speaker 02:
A couple of responses, Your Honor. First, our position is that the comparators are already in place, and that's evident from the text of the plan as well. All of the other water users and dischargers for the Bay Delta are required now to meet the 1.0 standard, which is a relaxed standard from the standard that they had previously been required to meet. So the comparators are already established by the terms of the plan.

[00:03:38] Speaker 01:
Can I ask a point of clarification? Is it that each water user would necessarily be subject to the more relaxed 1.0 standard or that there's an overall relaxed 1.0 standard and the differential water rights are yet to be determined by later proceedings?

[00:03:57] Speaker 01:
It's more the latter, Your Honor, that it's – So this gets to my question. As I was thinking about the relevant case law to apply like United States v. Washington, a recent case about Kings County, the analysis seems to be not just whether a provision is facially discriminatory or on its face disfavors the US government. But whether, in fact, there are actual burdens that the U.S. government faces that are unique relative to other people.

[00:04:27] Speaker 01:
And it's the second half. And I wanted to ask if you agree with that framing of it. And if so, how do we know just yet? Because we haven't yet determined or the Water Board has not yet determined how this will play out vis-a-vis the U.S. and other water rights holders.

[00:04:47] Speaker 02:
I think this comes down to the fundamental, perhaps the fundamental dispute here is whether the plan has effect right now. And the United States' understanding and position is that the amended plan does have legal effect now. And the Bureau of Reclamation views itself as bound by the 0.7 standard from April to August and 1.0 for the remainder of the year. And it is suffering a hardship as a result of having to meet that more stringent standard as compared with other users.

[00:05:21] Speaker 01:
Let me pose it this way. The 0.7 standard is the standard that Reclamation has had to use since 1995.

[00:05:31] Speaker 01:
So if the Water Board had never changed, never made any 2018 amendments, we wouldn't be calling reclamation – or you wouldn't be calling reclamation's requirements to be an injury, would you?

[00:05:44] Speaker 02:
Correct.

[00:05:44] Speaker 01:
It's only it's only an injury in relation to if there's disparate disfavored treatment going on. And I guess that's the question I have is how do we know that that will actually take place? You know, for example, suppose the water board decides and I don't know if this could happen or not. Suppose the water board decides through administrative processes that some people should have a point seven standard for some of the time and others have a one point zero standard. If there are other parties that also have to comply with the .7 standard, does the U.S.

[00:06:17] Speaker 01:
government have an intergovernmental immunities claim?

[00:06:21] Speaker 02:
Well, I think if there were – if the plan contemplated other parties having to meet that more stringent standard, perhaps we would not have a claim. I think our fundamental point here is that the plan itself is going to govern all future implementation. So as the board is implementing the plan going forward, it will be governed by the standards that have been established in the plan.

[00:06:45] Speaker 01:
Right, but you said a moment ago that the latter was what your interpretation of the plan was, which is that there's an overall 1.0 standard for the interior delta, and that might mean...

[00:06:59] Speaker 01:
Well, this might be my add-on. That might mean that there are differential treatments of different water rights holders within the Delta such that someone else could also have a .0 requirement. Is that possible?

[00:07:12] Speaker 02:
I do not – my understanding is that it would – it's possible that there could be some condition on another water user that would help at some point in the future relieve the burden on the Bureau of Reclamation. But that's in the future, and that's what we would deem to be fairly speculative.

[00:07:35] Speaker 02:
Our position here is that the plan, since it was issued and went into legal effect in early 2019, has been working the discrimination against the Bureau of Reclamation.

[00:07:49] Speaker 04:
Is the plan essentially like a regulation that binds the board and these other proceedings?

[00:07:54] Speaker 02:
I think that's a fair way to characterize it, Your Honor, that this would be certainly for the Bureau of Reclamation, bound by the terms here, I think it's from just the text of the amended plan, it says that the Bureau of Reclamation shall be required to continue to comply with these salinity levels as a condition of its water rights. And I think this goes to one of the points that the Board has tried to make in opposing our appeal here, is this idea that it's possible that Reclamation itself could have an amendment to its water rights.

[00:08:31] Speaker 02:
But we submit that that is foreclosed based on the text that I just read from pages 409 and 410 of the record, that any attempt to alter the standard, the water quality objectives that apply to the Bureau of Reclamation would be denied. In other words, it would be a futile position

[00:08:53] Speaker 04:
Is there some mechanism to get this amended rule changed, like some state law mechanism?

[00:09:00] Speaker 02:
I think the – I'm not aware of a state law mechanism. I believe there would be – the simplest way to change this would be to amend the plan.

[00:09:10] Speaker 02:
And I think that goes to sort of the heart of our contention here is that this is a final plan, and the only way to change – These objectives that have been outlined both for Bureau of Reclamation and all the other users would be to amend the plan. There's really no other way for the reclamations.

[00:09:27] Speaker 04:
And I mean, that is my understanding is there is a state law process for challenging an amended plan.

[00:09:35] Speaker 04:
Well, we're just regarded as a final some kind of final rule for purposes of a state law challenge.

[00:09:44] Speaker 02:
What we're asking here is that we're asking the federal government to have our claim heard in the federal courts, asserting jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 1345, like our discrimination claim to be heard in federal district court. So we believe that's the best path forward for resolving our allegations about the discriminatory treatment here.

[00:10:12] Speaker 03:
Do we know who the relevant comparators are for purposes of deciding whether this plan discriminates against the federal government?

[00:10:24] Speaker 02:
Yes, Your Honor. We do have the comparators.

[00:10:27] Speaker 02:
All the other users, all the other water users and dischargers who are now governed by the amended plan, which, as I said, has been adopted by the board and given legal effect by the Office of Administrative Law, that creates the set of comparators that would be in front of the federal district court if it were to hear our intergovernmental immunity claim on the merits.

[00:10:51] Speaker 03:
For example, give me one comparator. that it has been treated differently?

[00:10:59] Speaker 02:
I don't have a, I think any other entity, whether it's the state of California or any other entity that an irrigation district is discharging water or is using water and then discharging the remaining water, any of those users would be in this category of other users.

[00:11:22] Speaker 03:
Who would that be specifically?

[00:11:25] Speaker 02:
I think that I don't know all the players in the irrigation districts.

[00:11:33] Speaker 02:
I think a couple of them were mentioned in the district court proceeding that we're undergoing.

[00:11:38] Speaker 03:
We can't make one right now.

[00:11:41] Speaker 03:
I mean, who would we compare the borough government to?

[00:11:47] Speaker 02:
Well, again, I come back to the It was one of the irrigation districts was the Merced irrigation district.

[00:11:57] Speaker 02:
I think the fundamental contour of our claim is that this is every other user, regardless of who it is, in the Bay Delta has a relaxed standard compared to the United States.

[00:12:10] Speaker 02:
And so that's – those are – all of those dischargers are the comparators.

[00:12:17] Speaker 01:
What's your best case for the proposition that we can look at a regulation that seems facially discriminatory but don't need to see whether the US has actually been burdened uniquely in some kind of way relative to other comparators? Yeah.

[00:12:37] Speaker 02:
Well, I don't think we're saying that the court does not need to engage in a comparison. We understand that's sort of a fundamental part of the intergovernmental immunity claim.

[00:12:49] Speaker 01:
Of the relative burdens.

[00:12:51] Speaker 02:
Right.

[00:12:52] Speaker 01:
But I guess to the questions that the panel has been posing, the policy seems to indicate that others as a group would be subject to this more relaxed standard approach. But you haven't identified a particular water holder that will actually be subject to the – unless your assertion is you know for a fact that every single other water holder is going to be subject to the revised relaxed 1.0 standard.

[00:13:21] Speaker 02:
All others – and this goes back to my point about the – having legal effect all other users from our perspective are now bound by that there may be steps to achieve that standard down the road there may be steps to implement that objective down the road but in implementing it the board will be governed by the relaxed standard for every other user I think that's the thrust of our of our argument when it comes to other competitors if I could reserve the remaining time for a bottle thank you

[00:14:05] Speaker 00:
Good morning, Your Honors. Dylan Johnson, Deputy Attorney General for the State of California on behalf of the California State Water Resources Control Board. I'd like to begin by addressing what I think is a misunderstanding, which we've tried to clarify in our brief, but about the difference which some of these questions, Your Honors, we're getting to or asking gets to, which is the difference between the objective itself, which is in the nature of the regulation, and the implementation measure.

[00:14:36] Speaker 00:
which is what we're talking about when we refer, when reclamation refers to the provision that addresses them specifically in the plan. Now, that distinction is made on one hand fairly clearly because the plan itself is made up of primarily two components, the establishment of water quality objectives and the program of implementation, which talks mostly in general terms about how the board is going to get to achieving those objectives. So what the board did in 2018 was is it changed the objective for the April through August time period from 0.7 to 1.0.

[00:15:13] Speaker 00:
So it changed that overall regulation. But that does not dictate what the Board needs to do as a matter of using its implementation authority in the second step of its process. Now, reclamation was addressed in the plan, specifically in the program. I will also note that the Department of Water Resources was also addressed specifically. So it's not just reclamation. It happens to be the case that due to the size of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, which is what the California Department of Water Resources runs, and the historic interaction with salinity in the Southern Delta, which is in our brief, is discussed, that the Central Valley Project had as a primary purpose going back decades controlling salinity.

[00:15:57] Speaker 00:
There are unique factors at play for these two projects that made calling them out specifically in the program of implementation, more appropriate.

[00:16:05] Speaker 04:
Well, I mean, I think that kind of gets to the key issue because on its face, the plan makes a distinction, right, between the federal government and everybody else. I don't think that's disputed. Do you agree on this point?

[00:16:21] Speaker 00:
It treats them differently in that it names them specifically.

[00:16:24] Speaker 04:
Right, but it imposes a different salinity standard than on everyone else.

[00:16:30] Speaker 00:
No, Your Honor. The salinity standard, the objective, is 0.7, and it applies across the Bay Delta, essentially this watershed.

[00:16:38] Speaker 04:
The implementation measure— Isn't the United States subject to a more stringent standard?

[00:16:45] Speaker 00:
The objective is the same. What it's subject to is its preexisting permit term.

[00:16:49] Speaker 04:
Right, but so other people can get a more favorable one.

[00:16:53] Speaker 00:
It's possible, but it's also possible—and this is what the Board discussed in the Program of Implementation— that others could be subject to shared responsibility in some form, something more stringent than 1.0.

[00:17:06] Speaker 00:
Because as a matter of trying to, so let me back up and just talk about for a minute the hydrology here. As the court may be aware, the way the lower San Joaquin River runs, it goes from the south to the north toward the bay. So there's this point, Vernalis, which is essentially the point where the water enters the bay.

[00:17:25] Speaker 00:
The objective is designed to maintain salinity at that Vernalis point and at several points within the delta. As that water travels further into the delta and the bay, it becomes more saline. So the board found in 2018 water needs to be at a cleaner, fresher quality at Vernalis in order to achieve the objectives downstream, which means even though the objective for the protection of agriculture in Vernalis needs to be 1.0, As a matter of implementing, to get to 1.0 in the interior, you're going to need water that's even cleaner than that.

[00:17:58] Speaker 04:
So you refer to other proceedings. When will those take place?

[00:18:04] Speaker 00:
The implementation proceeding that you were referring to?

[00:18:08] Speaker 00:
We don't have a date certain for that yet. And there have been initial steps. We've talked about in the briefing here some of the FERC licensing proceedings that The board had imposed some terms related to salinity in those initial water quality certifications.

[00:18:22] Speaker 04:
But so when could this, you know, the United States has an argument, a claim, a theory that on the face of this amended plan, there's discrimination. When could they reasonably get resolution of that?

[00:18:34] Speaker 00:
Once the implementation has occurred and so that we know. When would that be? I can't give you a date. I don't know.

[00:18:41] Speaker 04:
How about even ballpark? Are we talking two years, five years, ten years?

[00:18:45] Speaker 00:
I would assume within five years.

[00:18:48] Speaker 00:
This is a complex process.

[00:18:50] Speaker 03:
Are you saying that we can't determine whether this is actually a discriminatory burden on the federal government until you do the implementation?

[00:19:06] Speaker 00:
That's correct, Your Honor, because I think one of the misunderstandings here that was evidenced by some of the things Mr. Turner said, which I heard him say if the plan contemplated others having to meet 0.7, then they may not have a claim here. And that's exactly what the plan does. It contemplates others having salinity burdens. It may not be 0.7. It may be something different. But in the nature of an IGI claim, which is factual, a discrimination claim, you also have to look at similarly situated parties.

[00:19:37] Speaker 00:
So it's not just a matter of saying you have to actually adjust, like calibrate who is the appropriate comparators.

[00:19:46] Speaker 04:
Well, this may kind of more gets to the question of whether you should ultimately win. on the intergovernmental immunity question, but all we're having to decide now is whether this should just go forward now or I guess at some undetermined point. And that's what concerns me about the position here, that it seems that on the face of the rule, there's a distinction made between the United States and everyone else. It seems that there must be a good reason for that on your part, on your client's part. I just don't know why we can't have that dispute resolved now as opposed to letting a case that was filed in 2019 sit around indefinitely.

[00:20:21] Speaker 04:
Maybe the United States will lose, but at least it will be adjudicated.

[00:20:24] Speaker 00:
So the prudential ripeness factors include whether further factual development is necessary, and that's exactly what the district court found here. And as has been pointed out, the district court found in favor of the U.S. on the other two prongs but still said, essentially, I don't have the facts here to adjudicate this claim. Because the plan on its face doesn't set the obligations for everybody else.

[00:20:46] Speaker 04:
Couldn't your client come forward with the rationale to say, listen, even if the United States' interpretation of this amended rule is right, here's why we did this, and here's why this makes sense. Why do we need to wait? And that could be evaluated. Experts could testify. Whatever needs to be done could be done. But then it would be done, and we wouldn't be here in five years asking, is it ripe yet? Is it ripe yet? Is it ripe yet?

[00:21:10] Speaker 00:
Because fundamentally, again, it may be that the board decides others have some salinity objective or some salinity responsibilities here that need to be compared. If you try to adjudicate this right now without knowing what the rest of the water users are going to be subject to, you're missing a fundamental piece. And it wouldn't enable the court to fairly adjudicate the claim because it doesn't know what the actual facts are.

[00:21:33] Speaker 04:
What is the function of this amended rule in the proceedings? Does it not supply some kind of term of engagement?

[00:21:41] Speaker 04:
You mean what are the... Yeah, we have this amended plan. So what function does that have in the proceedings?

[00:21:47] Speaker 00:
It sets the overall rules, but they have to be implemented through mechanisms that actually tell water users, okay, you're going to have to put this much water down the river. You're not going to be able to divert this much during this time of year. There's a lot of intricate, complex things that go into assigning among all the water users. How do we ultimately get to that overall rule? So for another example, the other major component the board amended in 2018 was the flow objective. So it's how much water is going to have to come down the three major tributaries in the lower San Joaquin River.

[00:22:20] Speaker 00:
Now that just says 40% flow, but on its own it does nothing. The board has to go and tell those water users, okay, here's how we're going to get there. Here's what you're going to have to do. And so that's a product of this implementation proceeding through which the board exercises potentially adjudicatory authority.

[00:22:35] Speaker 04:
Isn't it all done against the background of this amended plan, which sets what the United States claims is a discriminatory rule?

[00:22:42] Speaker 00:
It is done, but again, it doesn't set the requirements for the others in the watershed.

[00:22:48] Speaker 04:
What if this had just been a statute? What if the legislature had passed this exact paragraph that we're talking about and it was a statute? Would we be having the same discussion about whether this is prudentially right because there needs to be more proceedings?

[00:23:03] Speaker 00:
I mean, I think if the statute called for or allowed for further development of the policies and how others are going to be treated, then yes, potentially.

[00:23:11] Speaker 04:
That's a pretty foreign idea, though, to say that when a statute, you know, facially discriminates against the United States or, frankly, anybody, that they couldn't come forward with a claim at that time to make that challenge because of some possible future proceedings that might iron all this out.

[00:23:28] Speaker 00:
Well, that's again, I would I would I would. dispute that it facially discriminates because the other responsibilities haven't been established. And we know the board operates in two steps. It's not like the board just adopted this regulation and said, this will probably be it, but who knows, maybe we'll do something else. It's well established the board operates in two steps, much like in Ohio Forestry, the agency that was at SU there, where it adopts the overall plan and And then people have to come forward with logging proposals, and the agency has to respond to those.

[00:24:01] Speaker 00:
And that's the elements that those factual elements that are developed through responding to those plans that we have here in the implementation proceedings.

[00:24:09] Speaker 01:
So can I clarify one thing? So is it the case that if there's an overall objective of 1.0, that doesn't necessarily mean that each of the water rights holders would be held to that salinity objective? It could vary depending on what the Board thinks will ultimately achieve the 1.0 objective. Is that what you're saying?

[00:24:26] Speaker 00:
That's what I'm saying, yes, Your Honor, that the Board may decide that it needs to impose some kind of more stringent requirements on water users, if necessary, to get to 1.0.

[00:24:35] Speaker 01:
But if you said that, is it Vesalius, that that initial point, Vernalis, needed to be cleaner water, can it be the case that water rights holders later on would also be subject to 0.7? You know, even if they're subject to 0.8 or 0.9, couldn't that potentially form the basis for an IGI claim?

[00:25:02] Speaker 00:
Yeah, it very well could be that some are subject to something different in terms of meeting the salinity objective, but that would have to be the facts you need to assess whether the U.S. has been treated unfairly because there are many factors that go into considering, based on the size of the projects and so forth, what would be a fair distribution of the responsibilities to meet overall that 1.0 objective.

[00:25:27] Speaker 04:
But why isn't it...

[00:25:29] Speaker 04:
Why isn't it a live question now on the theory that the amended plan sets a rule of engagement for future proceedings and that the rule of engagement disadvantages the United States at the outset?

[00:25:42] Speaker 00:
Because the plan does not limit the board in any way from assigning other responsibilities related to salinity to any other water users.

[00:25:51] Speaker 00:
If the plan said base something like there is no opportunity for us to do anything else very definitive you know in that nature than yes maybe but. The way the nature of the program of implementation is mostly general it says the board will do things like implement this through further water right adjudicatory proceedings or water regulatory proceedings. It does not by and large identify everybody's responsibility so the admission of them for other water users is not an indication. that the board has reached a definitive conclusion that it's only the U.S., and that's it, that has to deal with salinity.

[00:26:24] Speaker 00:
And the plan speaks specifically to that by saying the board may consider the responsibilities for others in the watershed.

[00:26:31] Speaker 01:
What's a little bit odd to me is if the water board wanted to switch over to a 1.0 standard overall, Why jump the gun seemingly by saying, but reclamation has to stick with 0.7 right now? If there are things left to be determined, why single out the U.S. in the first place?

[00:26:52] Speaker 00:
So it has to do with the history of the Bay Delta and salinity and the history of how it was controlled. Going back many years, largely at Vernalis at least, the CVP and reclamation were controlling salinity conditions there. In many cases, as a product of of Reclamation's agreement to do this to some extent.

[00:27:13] Speaker 01:
The D1641 term... But Reclamation was agreeing to do this within the backdrop of the Water Board thinking that 0.7 was the appropriate standard for agricultural purposes, and it seemed like that started to change.

[00:27:26] Speaker 00:
Yeah, but the point I'm making is that there's this history here that results in them currently, and by the way, just I want to make clear that The way the plan works, since it's not self-executing, the way this should be viewed is as we're all living in the world pre-2018 amendments because the Board has done nothing to anybody yet. Reclamation is operating under its previous permit term. And the reason that the Board had these references, again, not only to Reclamation but also to DWR, was because of their history with respect to salinity in the Delta.

[00:27:59] Speaker 00:
Also... The board is under a requirement under state law and to an extent the Clean Water Act to look at, there's an anti-degradation policy and the board has to, as part of its process in amending the objectives, consider whether this is going to lead to a degradation of water quality. And so as part of the findings related to that, the board has to say, well, no, determine if it will or will not. And looking at reclamation's previous permit term, that provides a basis for finding that that water quality won't be degraded.

[00:28:31] Speaker 00:
But that by no means excludes the board or prevents the board from considering shared responsibility, as is done with DWR in the interior, not at Vernalis, because DWR doesn't control facilities that affect the water coming through Vernalis.

[00:28:47] Speaker 04:
Yeah, I guess the question is, those sound like reasons why you would set it up this way. Why can't this just be hashed out now?

[00:28:55] Speaker 00:
Again, because, Your Honor, we don't know what the comparators and what their responsibilities are yet, because the board hasn't set them yet. So there's no way to adjudicate this in a vacuum, or it would be unfair to adjudicate it on the assumption the board's not going to impose responsibilities on anybody else, because that's not how the plan should be read. That's not what the plan is intended to say.

[00:29:23] Speaker 04:
If we have other questions for you before you sit down.

[00:29:28] Speaker 04:
Okay.

[00:29:29] Speaker 00:
Thank you, Your Honors.

[00:29:30] Speaker 04:
Thank you.

[00:29:40] Speaker 02:
Thank you. I did want to address opposing counsel's point. I think a lot of those go to the merits question. I do think it's time for this case to be adjudicated in federal district court. If there's a rationale, we would like to hear what that rationale is for the discriminatory treatment.

[00:29:55] Speaker 03:
Paragraph 90 of your First Amendment complaint You say the board asserted that the board had bound that reclamation was the principal cause of salinity exceedances at Vernalis.

[00:30:15] Speaker 03:
And so is that what you want to adjudicate? The issue of whether there's a rationale for requiring Reclamation to have a lower salinity rate because it's the biggest contributor at the Bernal's point.

[00:30:41] Speaker 02:
Yes, that would be the thrust of our intergovernmental immunity claim, having the similarly situated users established, the disparity established, and then looking to see what the rationale is for that disparate treatment.

[00:30:54] Speaker 03:
That would be the heart of our— Don't they say—I mean, doesn't everybody acknowledge that that's the rationale?

[00:31:02] Speaker 02:
Well— The United States would like a chance to challenge that determination. If that is the rationale, maybe there are other layers to the rationale. We would I see him over time if I go ahead. Yeah, we would like the opportunity to to adjudicate this claim fully. We just haven't had that opportunity yet.

[00:31:27] Speaker 02:
I see that my time. If I do want to make a concluding remark, I would just say in closing, Your Honor, this case is less like Ohio forestry. As my opposing counsel suggests, it's not a two step process. We do have immediate effects on the Bureau of Reclamation. It is more akin to some of the other case law we cited, such as loud versus Department of the Interior and Association of Irritated Residents. Again, we would submit that this case it's time. This case is ripe and it's time for it to be heard in district court. Thank you.

[00:31:56] Speaker 04:
Thank you. Thank you both. The matter is submitted.