But not one commenter noted the bias in the article. The 'poor' farmers are big agribusiness that took a semi-desert and applied water to it many decades ago. They saw the shortage coming and connived an underground reservoir away from the state and filled it up with 'excess' water in flush years and sold it back to the state at huge profit in shortage years, and kept the massive dividends for themselves. Before the 'farmers' came you could kayak from San Francisco to Yosemite without a single portage. Salmon and sardines was a multi-million dollar industry, as was recreational fishing. Meanwhile the 'farmers' used aerial irrigation because it was cheaper than drip, and brought in illegal aliens to work their corporate fields. And they bred like rabbits and smuggled their families in to join them, and drank water, took showers, washed their cars, ...
So over the years the population increased just only slightly slower than the stupidity and greed of the legislators. The state set up their own standards for the sustainability of the Delta, and after years of litigation and demonstrated failure of the state's ability to balance the needs of people with its stewardship of resources for all, (including Mother Nature), a federal judge found the basis of the standards laughable and shut off the pumps.
This is the third year that salmon fishing has been closed to most of the west coast, and we are expecting yet another year to come. The prime game fish are all but gone. What remains, symbolically enough, are the bottom feeders. Of course they can't be eaten because of all the heavy metals deposited in S.F. Bay over the decades.
So before you make up your mind, read a book like The Cadillac Desert. Otherwise you become a stooge of big business, and all you are to them is a target for your wallet.
****The ‘poor’ farmers are big agribusiness that took a semi-desert and applied water to it many decades ago.****
Yea, that was like for growing food and stuff. Kinda kept a lot of people alive ya know.
****They saw the shortage coming and connived an underground reservoir away from the state and filled it up with ‘excess’ water in flush years and sold it back to the state at huge profit in shortage years, and kept the massive dividends for themselves****
Yea, big farmers have some mighty big crystal balls...
****Before the ‘farmers’ came you could kayak from San Francisco to Yosemite without a single portage. Salmon and sardines was a multi-million dollar industry, as was recreational fishing****
Six of one a thousand of the other eh...There has been much more food come out of the valley than would have ever come from the fish.
****Meanwhile the ‘farmers’ used aerial irrigation because it was cheaper than drip****
No, they started with aerial because that’s all they had back then and saw no need to switch over the vast expanse to a tech that is much more suited to small areas and indoor growing.
****and brought in illegal aliens to work their corporate fields. And they bred like rabbits and smuggled their families in to join them, and drank water, took showers, washed their cars****
Most all of the workers had and still have visas. The farmer is not required to ship them home when the season is over, they are supposed to do that themselves. But I guess you leftists are now trying to tell us that you agree that there are too many illegals here eh? ya right...
****The state set up their own standards for the sustainability of the Delta, and after years of litigation and demonstrated failure of the state’s ability to balance the needs of people with its stewardship of resources for all, (including Mother Nature), a federal judge found the basis of the standards laughable and shut off the pumps.****
Which is a violation of states rights and should be ignored by the state.
****This is the third year that salmon fishing has been closed to most of the west coast, and we are expecting yet another year to come. The prime game fish are all but gone****
There are many reasons for the decline of the fish populations, one being that the feds won’t let the states remove sea lions from the fish ladders as they kill them and take a bite or two from the soft bellies and discard the rest.
Wow, very interesting. Thanks for the post. I too remember when the fishing was fantastic from the Farrallons to the Bay, on up the Delta and throughout the many trout rivers, and now all that’s gone.
Leftists are anti-business. So conservatives feel the need to defend the actions of business even when it is demonstrably non-conservative.
If anything is conservative, surely it is “conserving” our natural resources and environment.
I have no idea whether the particular issue here has been rightly decided by the judge. I do know that kneejerk defense of any and all business activity is profoundly unconservative.
Just as capitalists will cheerfully sell the rope to hang them with to commies, they will also cheerfully destroy the commons we all have to live in, if they can make a buck by doing so.
Capitalism, like science, is amoral. It is merely the most efficient way of allocating resources based on the demand. It does not figure issues like right and wrong into its accounting. This works just fine, as long as we don’t expect the market to do something it is not suited for.
“Otherwise you become a stooge of big business, and all you are to them is a target for your wallet.”
Please keep in mind gov’t is big bussiness. Feinstein gorged herself of taxpayers dollars on the California aquaduct. Her and her husband must find it more lucretive to champion environmental causes.
I'm sorry to have to say this, but that book is the biggest pocket of mental puss ever registered in the Library of CONgress!!!
IMO Marc Risener doesn't begin to understand all he thinks he knows on the subject and has deliberately colored everything presented in that book in a severly slanted way that is disgraceful!!!
He deliberately set out to poison all the water the Bureau of Reclaimation has used the taxpayer's resources to bless this state with! Pat Brown presided over the vast improvement of the three biggest and most vital roles a government can engage in... Water, Roads & Education!!!
Only Wallace Stegner is a worse author of books on the subject of the erroroneus environmental policies and the politics of water especially in CA!!!