After years in court, county water agency prevails – and is off the hook for being treated as a polluter.

When you think of clean water, maybe crystal-clear bubbling brooks come to mind. Or maybe you think of stacks and stacks of paper, reports documenting various water quality metrics.

It’s the latter that’s been at issue in court for seven years when it comes to the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, which has long argued it’s not required to file reports with the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. In 2010, Monterey Coastkeeper sued MCWRA, alleging the agency violated the Porter-Cologne Act – California’s version of the Clean Water Act – for failures to report agricultural pollutants that are discharged into the Blanco Drain and Reclamation Ditch, both of which eventually empty into the sea.

The question at issue: Does MCWRA count as a polluter under California law?

In 2015, Monterey County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wills delivered an emphatic yes, ruling in favor of Coastkeeper.

MCWRA appealed the decision, and in a Dec. 7 ruling, the Sixth District Court of Appeal overturned Wills’ ruling.

The basis of the decision is that Coastkeeper didn’t follow the proper administrative process, and should have instead sought intervention from the regional water board, rather than MCWRA.

The water board itself has waffled on the question of whether MCWRA qualifies as a polluter. In a Jan. 7, 2015 letter to Judge Wills, then-executive officer Ken Harris wrote: “[We have] determined that MCWRA is a waste discharger and must file a report of waste discharge… for its activities in and around the Reclamation Ditch and Blanco Drain watersheds.”

But a follow-up letter two weeks later to the attorneys on the case muddied those waters: “[The water board staff] does not construe the [Jan. 7] letter to the court as a request for MCWRA to file [a report of waste discharge]. The letter is not a board order, and the executive officer did not intend it to be a request for [reporting waste discharges].”