A SANTA Clara judge has refused to order the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District and California American Water to pay more than $250,000 to the Sierra Club and a local steelhead group after the water board and Cal Am delayed a lawsuit challenging the State Water Resources Control Board’s order that Monterey Peninsula residents drastically curtail their use of water from the Carmel River.

In the decision, Judge Peter H. Kirwan denied the Dec. 4, 2012, reimbursement request by the Sierra Club and the Carmel River Steelhead Association. Attorney Laurens Silver, who intervened in the suit to defend the cutback order, told The Pine Cone he’s appealed the case to the 6th District Court of Appeals.

Silver said his efforts encouraged Cal Am and the MPWMD to drop their suit, and told Kirwan his fees came to $256,934.

MPWMD attorney Heidi Quinn told The Pine Cone Kirwan issued the decision Dec. 18, 2012, but that her office only received notice of it last week. Quinn called the groups’ filing a “needless drain on public resources.”

In October 2009, the SWRCB imposed the cutback order, which requires Cal Am to reduce the amount of water it takes from the river by 70 percent, beginning in 2017. A week later, Cal Am and the water district filed suit, seeking to overturn the order. The Sierra Club and the steelhead group were “parties in interest” in the case, fighting to preserve the cutback order.

The case was dropped in August 2012, when Cal Am and the MPWMD decided they would rather concentrate their efforts on developing a new water supply. But they asked the judge to let them revive the suit later if need be, and the SWRCB agreed that they could.

Because the suit wasn’t decided in anyone’s favor, Kirwan found that the Sierra Club and the steelhead group were not prevailing or “successful” parties in the lawsuit, which Quinn said they needed to prove in order to justify the reimbursement of attorney costs.