Posted on 02/22/2014 11:45:38 AM PST by Jim Robinson
California’s San Joaquin Valley is the salad bowl of the world, providing the majority of fruits and vegetables for the entire nation. But, with another man-made drought looming, the San Joaquin Valley is in danger of becoming a dust bowl unless immediate action is taken to change policies that put the needs of fish above the livelihood of people.
House Republicans have a bipartisan, comprehensive solution to end future man-made droughts, bring job and water supply certainty to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys in California and decrease reliance on foreign food sources.
Get the Facts:
California’s water storage and transportation system designed by federal and state governments includes 1,200 miles of canals and nearly 50 reservoirs that provide water to about 22 million people and irrigate about four million acres of land throughout the state.
In May 2007, a Federal District Court Judge ruled that increased amounts of water had to be re-allocated towards protecting the Delta smelt – a three-inch fish on the Endangered Species List.
Because of this ruling, in 2009 and 2010 more than 300 billion gallons (or 1 million acre-feet) of water were diverted away from farmers in the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay – eventually going out into the Pacific Ocean.
This man-made drought cost thousands of farm workers their jobs, inflicted up to 40 percent unemployment in certain communities, and fallowed hundreds of thousands of acres of fertile farmland.
Unemployment remains at a regional average of 17%. With current precipitation at near-record lows, the same regulations will be imposed pushing unemployment even higher.
The Pelosi-led Congress did nothing to reverse the plight of the San Joaquin Valley and even obstructed repeated Republican actions to reverse the situation. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act reflects Republican promises to avoid another...
(Excerpt) Read more at naturalresources.house.gov ...
The priorities of the current population and governance of California are truly impaired, it is like watching a person intoxicated on alcohol or pot trying to walk a tight rope while painting something like the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo they are not. And certainly not the Flying Wallendas.
California spent most of the past century developing the arid lands of the San Joaquin into viable farming communities, and the first problem was to tame the annual floods that swept in with the melting snow on the Sierras. A series of retention dams were constructed, damming up a number of rivers, and a water allotment program was worked out, whereby the water released from the retention dams was distributed in an orderly fashion, each of the enterprises being allotted so many hours to divert the water to their use, then waiting in turn for the next time water is available to them. The right to tap into the water flow was a large part of the value of the agricultural land, and over time, the system made the San Joaquin one of the true breadbaskets of the world, divided between being a huge truck farm for most vegetables, orange groves, grape arbors, cotton, and alfalfa hay, with crops possible almost all around the entire year, and the area does not know “winter” as such. Most of the fall and winter months are shrouded in a pervasive fog, which supplies a considerable amount of moisture in its own right, and is an excellent climate for tillage crops like small grains and winter vegetables.
There is a sizable aquifer beneath the San Joaquin, but with the spring melt not being allowed to be retained and released for agricultural purposes, there is great danger of overpumping the aquifer in an effort to provide even limited agricultural production, so the farm ground is either lying fallow, or given up for other non-agricultural purposes.
Either way, a way of life is being strangled in the name of some sort of obeisance to a nameless deity.
The second half of the upcoming week will feature soaking rain and mountain snow returning to drought-stricken California.
Confidence is growing for California to receive a substantial amount of rain and mountain snow from two storm systems later next week.
The first system is scheduled to move through California Wednesday through Thursday with the second to follow for Friday through the first part of the next weekend.
The second is likely to be the stronger and wetter of the two systems, bringing a much-needed soaking to many communities (with the deserts being the exception).
If the first storm bypasses or only grazes Southern California, the second will not. It is possible that Downtown Los Angeles receives at least half of the rain that fell in all of 2013 (3.60 inches) from this one storm Friday through next week.
Several inches of rain could soak the northern California coast, while feet of snow may blanket the Sierra. Snow levels could drop low enough to whiten the mountains of Southern California. . .
Not a single new dam in 40 years while the population has doubled...mostly illegals.
It's possible, with proper water infrastructure, to store 5 years of irrigation water in the Sierras.
But the commies who run this state would rather build a slow-speed passenger rail line from Madera to Bakersfield.
At several times the cost of a 3 new reservoirs the size of Melones.
Yeah, it'd probably kill the last dozen salmon that still venture into the Valley rivers but there's plenty of salmon that run from Sacramento to Alaska.
Even the retard commie Gavin Newsome (the governor we'll likely have after Jerry Brown, p!ss be upon his name) supports the redirection of this money to water infrastructure.
Comrade 0bama and his proletariat workers are anxious to drive the farms into bankruptcy so he can redistribute the wealth of the current landowners and form collectives.
Smelt should be canned and eaten.
This is not unlike what Lenin did to the Ukrainians in order to make them submit to Moscow. Starvation of a population is an effective manner of crushing resistance
And since when did The Left understand anything about nature, the Countryside or farming?
The second half of the upcoming week will feature rain and mountain snow returning to drought-stricken California.
Bad news.... Most of it will NOT soak into the ground but will runoff into rivers and eventually flow out into the sea because all the grasses and vegetation that usually prevents just this has been destroyed in a fire last fall.
"Goodbye California, I knew ye well..."
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