Date is set for hearing prompted by dead fish in the long meandering Kern River case
Kern River combatants are headed back to court where a local advocacy group hopes to force the City of Bakersfield to goose up flows, which were cut to a trickle leaving piles of dead fish west of Bakersfield. The hearing is set for May 9 at 8:30 a.m. in Division J before Kern County Superior Court Judge Gregory Pulskamp. “Nobody should be happy with the condition of the Kern River right now; the people deserve and the law requires a flowing river, not a couple of stagnant pools with gasping and cooking fish,” wrote Attorney Adam Keats in an email. Keats represents Bring Back the Kern and a coalition of other public interest groups in a lawsuit with Water Audit California against Bakersfield that seeks to have the city study how its water diversions impact the environment. The city owns water rights to the Kern as well as the river bed and six that it operates in from about Hart Park west to Enos Lane.