Posted on 09/17/2009 8:26:34 PM PDT by Jeff Head
Here we go again.
I was watching Sean Hannity tonight (9/17/2009), and have been following loosely the situation in the San Joaquin Valley of California with their water crisis over the small Delta Smelt minnow and its endangered species listing.
The Farmers have water rights to that water. There is no legal water rights for that water for a minnow over the farmers. There is only a manufactured judicial legal decision by liberal judges based on junk science and the whims of administrators and bureaucrats that create these incidents based on the Endangered Species Act and a rabid environmental policy.
This is an illegal "taking", and it is unconstitutional on its face. And it simply cannot stand.
This sounds more and more like what happened in the Klamath Basin Water Crisis to farmers of Oregon and northern California in 2001. At that time, the magical fish was the sucker fish...and every farmer in that basin knew that the sucker fish was not endagered and that they did not need a "full" lake to survive. It was junk science being used to push an anti-American environmental agenda then...plain and simple...and it is the same today.
Here is my suggestion to the Farmers and their allies in the San Joaquin Valley.
You have the numbers...many more people actively engaged in the fight than we had in Klamath. In Klamath, there were many meetings with politicians...followed by meetings with "officials" of government agencies. In the end, the result was the same...the water stayed off.
It was not until a few farmers and their allies took control of the headgates and turned the water back on that things began to happen. In that case, only a dozen farmers and their allies were at the gates the next morning when 50-70 armed law enforcement officers came and took the head gates back and again turned off the water.
If we had had 1000 farmers and their allies there that morning, they would not have been able to do so.
As it was, we did not, and so those officers, who had reconnoitered our position through the night, turned the water back off...temporarily.
But that was the spark and by the next afternoon, the farmers and their allies gathered en masse and surrounded the law enforcement officers (most of whom absolutely did not want to be there) and made their life miserable over the course of many weeks.
Ultimately, after the farmers pumped the water in small quanitities, and then siphoned it in larger quantities around the headgates, at a later rally where many hundreds were present, the farmers crossed the line again and penned the government officers in.
Soon thereafter, legal decisions began to change and the crisis was ultimately resolved and returned to the status quo and the farmers got their water.
To this day the Klamath Basin has continued getting enough water to farm.
Now the fight has moved to the much larger and larger producing San Joaquin Valley.
In the end, my advise is simple.
STOP BEING GLAD HANDED BY POLITIICANS AND OFFICIALS.
FIND A WAY TO TURN YOUR WATER ON THEN STAND VIGIL BY THE THOUSANDS AND KEEP IT ON.
Your livelihood, your way of life...YOUR LIBERTY is worth the effort and the risk. And make no mistake, that is exactly what is at stake here.
And make no mistake the rest of America...YOUR livelihood, your way of life, and your liberty by extension is also at stake. For if they can do this to your neighbors there in California and get away with it...they can do it to you.
Once those lines are drawn, and you engage in civil disobedience in this fashion, people will flock to you by the tens of thousands and the administration will be forced to turn things around and magically find, as the Bush administration did before them, the "new science" to support a reversal of their current policy.
God bless you farmers there. God bless all who support you.
In the end, it is your decision. This advise is simply given from one who witnessed the same type of governmental infringement, the same unconstitutional and illegal takings, the same judicial and environmental tyranny that you are experiencing now...and stood with those who did something about it.
I don't recall if elected reps had much say about the issues. Water rights is such a heavy duty issue that the bureaucrats, lawyers and lobbying organizations dominate it without much interference from politicians I think. In some respects that's probably a good thing. Pols in general don't have enough common sense or objectivity to handle such complicated and contentious problems. (See Health Care in the footnotes. lol)
I do not see any reason why this would not work. Does anyone else? I would like to see the minnows protected as well as other fish. This seems to me to be a solution that could work for everyone. Has it been considered and if not how do we get it to the people who can do it?
Thanks for the mention TigersEye. I know what you mean.
Take care.
Folks, some of you may have gotten the idea I didn’t want to address what as taking place in the San Joaquin Valley. Actually my sympathy goes to the farmers and my anger is directed toward the government d-heads who seldom if ever can figure these things out.
Humans 1, small insignificant fish 2.
Take the small fish and transplant them where they can live somewhere else. Let the farmers earn a living, and supply food to the citizens of the United States.
Then line the SOB that made this decision up against a wall, and give him his just rewards.
Look, I don’t really advocate violence here, but the government really needs to remember who they work for. What is going on up there is unconscionable.
I addressed the issue of southern California becoming more self-sustaining on the matter of water, because we could help reduce the pressure on these farmers and others. And we should.
Take care.
You can install compressed air hoses connected to small piping below lowest water level and around the cage, every few feet. Compressed air cylinders on-off valves would be triggered open by a Lo, Lo/Lo pressure switch installed in the pumps suction manifold.
If the pressure drops to the Lo level, a short burst of air will create a much larger volume of air at reduced pressure, which creates the required turbulence that moves leaves, branches, debris and what have you.
If the pressure drops to a Lo/Lo level, it shuts the pumps and sounds an alarm. Physical maintenance will be required then. It should not take long to clean without lengthy interruptions.
I assume there is already a larger gate or screen to prevent logs, large branches, fallen trees, larger debris, etc..
Sounds reasonable?
No, it certainly is not dry, but the pumping rate is less than 25% of normal.
The Klamath Basin extends down into California and we had numerous strong farmers with us at the headgates and supporters who were Californians.
The objective in Kalifornia in my humble opinion is to FORCE everyone to leave this sh!t hole!
The liberal elite want this for themselves!
I was just pontificating on how something like this *could* work; not that the idea I posited was even a good way to go comparatively. It just seemed more feasible to me at the time than the suggestion I originally responded to. My method is surely more grandiose and exotic, but in the long run it might be more maintenance free and cost effective (to borrow a beaten term from obama). Anyhow, if the enviros were so concerned; one would think that they would be willing to listen to reason and ideas, but my idea would probably have too much of a visual impact to be considered anyway. The price tag would be large initially and it would take more time, but at least with other ideas posited the water could flow pretty quickly in terms of time from inception to implementation while other more permanent solutions could be worked on at least.
If any consideration would be made in good faith to look at the impact of shutting the water off, the cost of that alone could easily be offset by several hundred million worth of engineering and construction expenses spent over a few years, especially considering all the porkulous money that is supposed to be available for “shovel ready jobs”.
Ahh, what do I know... supposedly I’m just a bitter clinging racist anyway...
I’d be happy to see something like this implemented too - who cares who gets the credit for it, just do the right thing for America as a whole and those suffering under a terminally bad decision.
It’s called “rural cleansing” and an unholy alliance is getting it done to us.
I think we’re in for some really rough times, in the very near future.
It was shocking to see. After some miles I recalled our earlier experiences. Sure 'nuff I was right.
Rough times indeed. Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best and taking what comes.
We tried to tell them, didn’t we?
I believe most were of the "it can't happen here" mentality. They truly could not grasp the nature of the source of the situation. Sorry to see it happening again, but of course with the same folks still around it was only a matter of time.
TURN THE WATER ON!
Well... I was wonderin if since them smelts are nuthin but minnows and as such are nuthin but bait, and since the GovernMental EnvironMentalist are now made the masters of the fate of CA’s ag industry... Does that make the EnvironMentalist the master baiters of the new century???
Nazi Nancy was able to go around the endangered protection laws: http://www.brayincandy.com/id7.html
Pray for America and Our Farmers
Did this start during the Obama regime? I’m trying to figure out when they first shut off the water.
This kind of reminds me the US Dept. of the Interior not letting the US army put radar on “their” mountain in Hawaii in Dec. 1941.
“Well... I was wonderin if since them smelts are nuthin but minnows and as such are nuthin but bait!”
You touched on part of the problem if one is a Smelt in the Delta.
Smelt are a favorite appetizer or main course for Striped Bass, Large Mouth Bass and Steelhead that cruise up and the Delta for food, fun and sometimes to spawn.
One of our younger relatives has become a Striped Bass expert on the Delta. He fly fishes at least 50 times a year and averages anywhere from 12-30 caught and release Stripers each trip with flies that look like Smelt.
He watches for signs that the Stripers have herded up a large number of smelt schools into an area the smelt can’t get out. When he sees the nervous water, he will roar up wih his 100 hp motor kill it about 100 yards from the frenzy and use his electric motor to get within 80’ of the smelt slaughter. He casts his flies right on the edges of the frenzies.
The schools of Stripers rip into their appetizer or main course in frantic food fight/eating frenzies. The smelt are eaten or slaughtered in minutes. A few escape, a few float on top of the water dead or dying, the rest are in the Stripers’s bellies. The Striper’s leave and look for another school of smelt.
I don’t know if it is the same smelt that comes to the surface in local lakes in late September/early October. In the lakes huge trout and large mouth bass are the predators eaters. If you get near one of these frenzies, the action can be fast and furious.
A few years ago a wannabe Fly Fisher was with me in a local lake. I kept cruising around outside the coves looking for a feeding frenzy on the smelt. I spotted a feeding frenzy and brought my boat in and killed the gas motor and used the electric motor sparingly. In about 12 minutes I had caught 6 huge trout and the same number of large mouth bass and released all but one for dinner.
I realized that my fishing wannabe was just sitting in the boat and not casting. He couldn’t believe the carnage re dead and crippled smelt. That was his last fishing trip.
Pacific Legal and some national farm organization are busy in Whatcom County, where I live, looking for a case to take to the Supreme Court. They say that Whatcom county has the most egregious violations of private property rights in the country and they are looking to find just the right case. The case has to proceed to a certain point before they can step in. It’s kind of like what the Democrats were saying about the secret camera Acorn tapes, if you don’t take it to the next step, no crime is committed. So, someone has to take the risk of opposing the elitist land grabbers.
This week, the county council and planners held a joint public meeting that wasn’t announced until 2:45 in the afternoon. I hear that the meeting was packed and everyone was lawyered up. Two towns joined the rural property owners in opposing the zoning changes. So, things are heating up.
I’m with you amom!
Be Ever Vigilant!
That's my suspicion as well. Turn off water, let them go bust, somebody "connected" buys the land cheap, the judge is gotten to overturn his decision, land value goes back up.
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