Posted on 06/15/2024 10:50:24 AM PDT by karpov
California is awash in water after record-breaking rains vanquished years of crippling drought. That sounds like great news for farmers. But Ron McIlroy, whose shop here sells equipment for plowing fields, knows otherwise.
“I’ll be lucky if I survive this year,” he said.
Illustrating how broken California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.
Why? Endangered fish.
The pumps that transport water from wet Northern California to the semiarid south have been drastically slowed to protect threatened migrating smelt, measuring up to 3 inches, and steelhead. That means growers in the U.S.’s richest farming area are having to plant fewer crops even as they are surrounded by water.
The decision by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and California officials, to curtail water to farmers for the silvery fish has ignited an uproar in the southern Central Valley, and threatens to upend this important agriculture region just as it was recovering.
“There’s no reason for it and it’s dangerous for the country,” said Wayne Western, farm manager of Hammonds Ranch, which plans to plant tomatoes, cotton and other crops on only 60% of its 5,000 acres this year, compared with 80% last year. “You don’t know how to plan. You kind of come to a standstill.”
Drought has pummeled California’s farm industry, the nation’s largest, for much of the past decade. University of California researchers estimate drought-related farm losses totaled $7 billion and cost 40,000 jobs in 2014, 2015 and 2022 combined.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Rural California is red, I’ve heard. But outnumbered by big city leftards, who might get red-pilled by price hikes on their crazy BS food fads. But unlikely. The crime, the filth, the illegals, etc., haven’t red pilled them. So why should more expensive avocado toast.
Silicon Valley used to be “The Valley of Heart’s Delight.” Fruit was planted starting in the 1880s and covered the valley with fruit trees in a few years. The soil is incredible here (if you don’t have clay by the bay). A house a few doors down was rebuilt 15 years ago and they dug a basement. They had topsoil down 15 feet and then hit a cobblestone ancient riverbed!
I stand corrected. 😁
I supplied Financial software to growers, packers, shippers, farmers et cetera for three decades. All the growers I knew were very conservative businessmen.
My plan. Use the 40% water to raise crops to feed your family, workers and fellow farmers. Next sell the extra food at a loss to an out of state co-op you and other farmers set up. California gets no tax revenue since in California you lost money. In the other state the co-op made money. Let the state and population in California starve because after all we are saving the fish!
How did the smelt ever survive a dry spell before people started “managing” the water?
THEY DIDN’T
A physical count taken a couple of years ago:
MULTIPLE BOATS IN THE DELTA ALL DURING THE SAME WEEK-—TAKING “COUNTS”=====
AFTER ALL OF THAT THEY FOUND 7 ——SEVEN-—Delta Smelt.
This is all about the California real estate racket (particularly benefitting Catellus Development, Kaufmann and Broad, etc.) so that they can build insta-cities along our supposedly "high speed rail" system, to be completed at outrageous cost "someday." The smelt is likely imported from Kamchatka but for a single "find" by a rather malleable ichtheo-archaeologist and is being snarfed by striped bass, also exotic but very popular among fishermen. As to the steelies, they're being hammered by Russian, Japanese, and Korean commercial fishing. You can read about a related case here.
Indeed lemmings always follow the same path.
Folks in the relevant areas largely aren’t represented by democrats in the legislature or Congress, but their numbers are swamped by the rat hordes in the Bay Area and Southern California cities. Remember, in 2020 6,000,000 in this state voted for Trump
How many of the boats counted the same smelt more than once???
Bad in the bad old days of the 1970’s there was a big drought in Santa Cruz so bad we took baths in the ocean. The government started taking our well water and billing us for what once was free.
I remember driving south to Orange county and there was no drought down in the desert scrub land. People were still washing cars, watering lawns, name it.
Until California, who basically owns or stole the water does this, there will be bad droughts and poor water management. Who profits?
"California Is Finally Awash in Water, but Its Farmers Can’t Get It. A push to save endangered fish has cut supplies to America’s produce epicenter, stirring resentment"
First, the states have never expressly constitutionally given the unconstitutionally big federal government the specific power to define or police endangered biological species.
"From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added]." —United States v. Butler, 1936.
But it remains that career California lawmakers are probably happy that non-popularly elected federal bureaucrats running constitutionally undefined federal regulatory agencies are doing their unpopular dirty work for them.
Also, the following videos about delta smelt make some interesting points, the first video clip showing Trump express his concerns about California water politics v. smelt.
Donald Trump: Delta Smelt Crisis: The Hidden Truth Behind California's Water Shortage (non-FR)
The second video notes that the smelt hasn't been seen in the delta for the last six years, the third video mentioning that predators and food competitors are helping to reduce the number of smelts.
Supreme Court probably needs to reign in the Endangered Species Act. So many species that are protected (fish, hawks, eagles, wolves, rattlesnakes) are not even actually endangered so they made up a new category “at risk”, and many are a threat to people, livestock and pets. Should not be protected at all. Actually, I think no species should be protected— if they failed to make it without help there is a good reason for it, we should respect it and move on. Wolves being a great example.
It’s the cities that control Kali. Just like in every other state.
I was not talking about a couple of years ago, more like a couple thousand years ago, or even earlier. There must have been prolonged droughts at times, yet the fish did not go extinct.
There was enough of water even before, but the fish (now maybe a dozen left) were getting their huge share before, due to court order. But they could blame it on drought and climate change.
Now they can’t!
BTW, the fish will not go extinct, it is well treated in some aquarium. And, despite all the water it gets, it is going extinct in the wild anyway.
There is something we do not know, why the fish is getting extinct, probably because some species just go extinct. Not because lack of water though!
Idiots in Cal don’t care if people starve and farms go bankrupt. And BTW, they’re lying as always... it ain’t about no damn fish. It’s all about pushing their control agenda.
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