Posted on 10/08/2009 8:22:50 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Finally acknowledging that there is a significant government-created crisis in the San Joaquin Valley, the Interior Department convened a public hearing Sept. 30, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein has announced she has asked her staff to begin assembling a major piece of legislation to address the water crisis facing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has issued a "memorandum of understanding" that will keep representatives from six federal agencies talking to various interest groups in California.
The problem is that it will take months to make such decisions and years for results to be apparent. The crisis is immediate for San Joaquin Valley farmers in the agricultural breadbasket for California and much of the nation. While the search for long-range solutions is worthy, in the short run the best and highest-impact option is to reverse a questionable decision to cut off irrigation water to Central Valley farmers.
The decision to cut off water to farmers resulted from a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service that the delta smelt, a three-and-a-half-inch-long minnow, was threatened, as defined by the Endangered Species Act. That announcement led to lawsuits by environmental groups arguing that sending water to farmers disrupted the fish's fall spawning season. In 2007, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger agreed and ordered the 6 million-acre-feet of water normally sent to farmers to be cut by a third.
The result has been agricultural devastation. A reader who recently drove home from Sacramento told us of miles and miles of brown fields, of groves of fruit and nut trees dying. A UC Davis study estimated farm revenue losses of $482 million to $647 million a year. To be sure, California's water troubles are driven by a number of factors, but the smelt ruling greatly exacerbated the problem...
(Excerpt) Read more at appeal-democrat.com ...
ping
You’re on twitter too? I must be the last one.
Even if the government would pay attention to its human constituents and restore the water to them, isn’t it kinda silly that a state with nearly 1000 miles of coastline has any problem at all with water?
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.
Yeah, but I don’t tweet much.
I drives me nuts when Enviroweenies would see humans suffer to save a critter that virtually no one has ever seen.
The spotted owl put many a breadwinner out of work and the darned bird died anyway.
I’m all for stewardship but these clowns never consider the impact on human beings.
I say we throw a hose over the Oregon border and steal their water. They’re so high, they’d never notice.
This sort of institutional insanity makes one wonder if there is any hope for survival.
If we just figured out a way where the liberals died off first it might be worth it.
“As usual, government IS the problem.”
That’s right. As I’ve posted to past articles on the matter I believe it’s part of another one of Feinstein’s land grabbing schemes.
Jerry Brown used to say “I’ll take that under advisement”, or he was taking whatever the topic under advisement, and then wouldn’t do anything. That appears to be the tactic of Feinstein’s as well.
These clowns aren’t going to do a damned thing for the farmers, or the State but milk it for all they can for their own personal wealth, and power.
Didn't know they had Twitter for a DEC. :-)
Arnie hasn’t the desire or the nads. A Tom McCormick would.
It’s criminal what the environazis, politicians and judges are doing here and all over the West.
Now that’s a plan I could support.
That’s pretty comical, coming from an Californian. Besides, you might want to check on how well the farmers on our side of the Klamath Basin noticed it when their water was taken.
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