Posted on 12/19/2008 8:36:29 AM PST by NormsRevenge
THE TIME MAY be coming, if it is not already here, when decision-makers in Sacramento finally understand that California must store a lot more water in reservoirs or lose much of its agriculture.
That message was delivered Monday by federal regulators, who placed severe restrictions on pumping water out of the Delta. The new rules in a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service permit will require more freshwater to be released into the Delta and a lot less water to be pumped out of the estuary.
U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger ruled that the old pumping permit was highly flawed because it did not do enough to protect fish like the Delta smelt.
Other species of fish in the Delta also are endangered and could face extinction without major cutbacks in water pumping.
When huge volumes of freshwater are removed from the Delta, fish are caught in the pumps. Even more damaging, salinity levels in the Delta rise, allowing invasive species such as clams, algae and plants to multiply and alter the entire estuary ecosystem.
The new permit is designed to save the Delta environment, regardless of the impact it will have on water users.
About two-thirds of Californians depend on water that flows through the Delta. However, it is agriculture that is likely to suffer the greatest impact.
Unlike a drought, when water use is cut back, the new regulations are not temporary. That means farmers and other water users no longer can rely on flows of freshwater to meet current demand.
In other words, the Delta has overstepped its limits and can no longer be depended upon to provide the volume of freshwater it has in the recent past.
If agriculture is to remain a healthy business in California and if other users want reliable supplies of water in dry months and in droughts, more water needs to be stored.
Certainly, there should be increased efforts to conserve water and use it as efficiently as possible. There is also the hope that desalination can be an economical means of supplying freshwater.
But the only practical way to provide the large volumes of water necessary for agriculture is with new and/or enlarged reservoirs. Reservoirs also could ensure sufficient water supples should a major earthquake damage pipelines running through the Delta.
Work on new and enlarged reservoirs, which take many years to complete, should have been started at least a decade ago. But it is never too late to begin.
The new restrictions on pumping water from the Delta will, we hope, serve as a warning that California must decide if it wants to significantly increase its water storage capacity or lose a large portion of its agricultural business and the many jobs that go with it.
California is rich in resource but clueless leadership-wise. That is where the real drought lies.
The delta used to be considered "a swamp." This now gives rise to new credence when leaders and wanna be leaders cry... "how do you drain the damned swamp when you're up to your ass in allegators?" (allegators being environmentalist activist attorneys getting paid win or lose by your retarded government)
Always remember... militant, luddite EnvironMentalists want to submit everything and everyone to "Arrested Development!" (in perpetuity!!!) Now, we have Republican "leaders" joining in with this dubious "cause!"
This is the fish are more important them people decision.
Why should they build more dams when they can steal water from Northern California for all their swimming pools?
How can California boost water storage when the enviro terrorists want to blow up every dam in California?
If the enviro terrorists get rid of the dams on the Sacramento River, Klamath, Trinity and American rivers, millions of Californians will have to move or die because the lack of water.
These idiots forget that California without those dams in dry summer and early to late fall becomes a damn desert.
Those precious Shad and Red Legged Frogs will die in the yearly dust bowls.
The greenies will never allow it. The will see humans and wildlife alike suffer on their false alter of quack environmentalism. They seek a “purity” that never existed.
The only way we are going to get more water storage is if we start importing Canadian beavers to our local waterways.
California is a national supplier of food - fruits, nuts, row crops, field crops. It is a major sector of the California economy that employs, not only farmers, but harvesters, processors, bankers, brokers, truck drivers, marketers, etc. It is time that California treated the agricultural industry with some respect.
As for reservoirs and dams, the enviros have an agenda to remove dams. They are currently in the process of getting their way on the four Klamath River dams.
If anyone looked at Lake Shasta on the Sacramento, they would be appalled at the water levels and the amount of bottom showing. They have talked about enlarging the height of the dam as if that would make a difference. When there is a drought and the courts release all the water in the reservoir for fish, it doesn’t matter how high the dam is. There is no additional water to fill it.
More water does not mean more fish (particularly salmon.) Sometimes it is what is happening with the ocean that is the main cause of a fish population decline.
Yep, we must protect our precious bodily fluids...
California's problem is its population, not its water supply.
Stop the growth, which is 100% immigration and well over 85% illegal, and the problem is temporarily solved.
Before wasting time reading this BS, I expect to see a list of the dams that hve been removed, and the longer list of dams that the nut jobs want to remove in California.
If rule by the best minds is called a Meritocracy, what is rule by the bottom 10% of IQ (the California Legislature) called?
That also if that is what they are doing.
California is stupid, they can have all the water and electricity they’ll ever need...
Nuclear desalinization via nuclear power plants...
They have enough fruits and nuts alone to supply the whole world for generations.
I don't need to tell you that it's NEVER been about the fricken frogs!!!
It's all about "Home-a-phobia" and no growthers, NIMBY's and BANANAs perpetrating economic suffocation and "Eco-Tourism" (rafting, etc.) as their only solution to all of CA's problems!!!
It's just as stupid as them saying that conservation will solve all of CA's energy problems!!!
And NOW I'm being told that because local elected officials wanted the typical multi-purpose dam, instead of just a flood control dam at Auburn, that all such officials were "greedy," and stupid. I'm getting that right here on this forum!!!
Yes! Everybody with two or more brain cells to rub together knows that these Sierran rivers all used to dry up every August/September into puddles that killed all aquatic life except microscopic Ameobas that remind me of some of these little people using the government to suffocate everything, today!!!
From my lips ... and here's more ..
1) California has adequate water for agriculture, even on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley.
2) Flood control, which is necessary, is a much more cost effective than storage.
3) The clamor for more storage is to support social development, not farms.
4) The goal of modern environmentalism is the destruction of the concept of private property.
1) Prove it.
2) Prove that, too.
3) Where's you evidence?
4) You left out Capitalism and an exceptional Christian nation's continued economic success that dominates and benefits the entire planet!!! (including the use of multipurpose dams and reservoirs!!!)
Tell that to Vic Fazio or Robert Matsui. These two idiot dems shut down the Auburn Dam in favor of building-up levees to give us 80 yr flood protection, instead of the 200 yr protection the dam would have provided.
Now, it's about more storage to protect the delta or put the screws to the farmers. Where were they- and what the hell were they thinking twenty years ago?
The answer comes to us from places like Chicago. This state is equally infested with Blagoyeviches. Entrenched croynies each bilking their 'loyal' interest groups with no concern for what's good for the state in the larger picture, just to pad their political careers.
Campaign contributions have gotten us where we are today. Mr. Levee builder greased the palms better than Mr. Dam builder. Mrs. Whitewater Rafter served better cookies than Mrs. Farmer at fundraising events.
Heck, with enough contractor money guaranteed to end up in Darell Steinberg's political war chest, I bet we could get a gigantic phallus erected (pun intended) right next to the capitol- as a symbol of what this state government thinks of the taxpayers in this state.
"Up Yours, I'm in it for Me!" ought to be the plaque hanging over the entrance on L street.
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