Enviros won't get attorneys' fees from Cal Am, judge rules.

The Sierra Club and Carmel River Steelhead Association will just have to suck it up. 

That was the message from the Sixth District Court of Appeal on Friday, when Judge Peter Kirwan denied the environmental groups' claim for $257,000 in attorneys' fees from Monterey Peninsula Water Management District and California American Water Company.

The award is connected to litigation over the State Water Resources Control Board's cease-and-desist order for Cal Am to end its illegal overpumping of the Carmel River. The state's 2009 cutback schedule orders Cal Am to reduce its river pumping 70 percent by December 2016.

To simplify the complex three-year game of legal Twister that followed, MPWMD and Cal Am challenged the state water board's cutback order, while Sierra Club and CRSA defended it. In 2012 the various parties settled agreeing to "collectively focus their attention on development of alternative water supplies for the Monterey region."

Then Sierra Club and the Steelhead Association asked MPWMD and Cal Am to reimburse their legal fees. Kirwan denied the claim, but they appealed.

On Dec. 5 the court dismissed the appeal, ruling the Sierra Club and Steelhead Association could not recoup their legal costs because they didn't officially prevail in court.

"Unfortunately the district needed to expend significant time, effort and resources to defend this matter," MPWMD attorney Heidi Quinn stated in an MPWMD press release.