Heliogenic Climate Change

“A federal judge has struck a blow for California’s water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem.  …

Based on a judicial ruling [in lawsuits brought by enviros], some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off.

The ruling was derived from an 800-page “biological opinion” put out by regulators enforcing the National Environmental Policy Act, ostensibly to protect a finger-sized fish called the delta smelt and some other wildlife. Regulators complained that smelt were getting ground up in pumping stations that brought river water from California’s north to its south, so the water had to stop.

Even the judge was appalled at being forced into the ruling but had no choice, given the law, and tried to cushion the impact.

Tuesday, that same judge, District Judge Oliver Wanger declared to federal regulators that they must consider the impact of their “draconian” actions on human communities, something they’ve never done up until now.

“Federal defendants completely abdicated their responsibility to consider alternative remedies,” Wanger wrote.

He also ripped into the environmental regulators for their junk science “guesstimates,” stating that their shut-off “lacked factual and scientific justification, while effectively ignoring the irreparable harm (their regulations) have inflicted on humans and the human environment,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.  …

It can’t happen too soon. The water shut-off has been a nightmare for California. Huge farms growing the world’s finest grapes, peaches, almonds, pistachios, plums and walnuts — as well as cotton, carrots, cantaloupe and the other lush truck crops that come out of California’s temperate weather and rich soil — have gone fallow.  …

But the worst part of these decisions is the high human cost. California’s communities have suffered terrible disruption, with unemployment as high as 45% in some towns and farm workers forced to stand in food lines for bags of Chinese-grown carrots near fields they once harvested.  …

Judge Wanger is a hero for ruling that federal water regulators must consider the impact of their rulings on human communities along with the fish they seek to protect. Americans’ rights have been trampled by out-of-control environmentalism, which at times seems to grant more rights to fish and other creatures than humans.

No community should have to bear the entire brunt of a man-made water shortage because of heartless, ignorant bureaucrats.

The judge’s ruling has restored some sanity into what has up until now been an atrocious out-of-control bureaucracy.”  “Water Sanity For Central California“

This is truly ironic.  Tens of thousands of farm workers are out of work in California’s devastated central valley because enviros sued the feds to force stopping the pumping of irrigation water from the delta, supposedly because the delta smelt needed more water to survive.  Now it turns out the problem for the smelt was not too little water but pollution from wastewater treatment plants.  Tell it to the devastated farmlands and farm workers:

“A new study to be published in the academic journal Reviews in Fisheries Science recommends that efforts to restore the endangered California delta smelt and other declining pelagic fish should more sharply focus on reducing nutrient pollution to the species’ native waters. The research indicates these fish populations would greatly benefit from reductions in the amount of nitrogen flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay-Delta from wastewater treatment plants and balancing the ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus contained in the discharged water.

“While a great deal of emphasis has been placed on ensuring there is enough water for delta smelt, we also need to recognize that the water also has to have the right chemical balance,” said Dr. Patricia Glibert of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “The research shows us that reducing the amount of nitrogen from Bay-Delta wastewater treatment plants should aid the recovery of the delta smelt population. The high nutrient loads are affecting the algae at the base of the food web, which in turn, affect the food supply for the fish. This has altered the ecology of the system over many years.”

For her research, Dr. Glibert analyzed 30 years of water chemistry, river flow, plankton, fish population and effluent discharge data to determine possible linkages to the population of the delta smelt and other pelagic fish in the Bay-Delta system. The analysis reveals that declines in delta smelt population most closely coincide with effluent changes from the region’s major wastewater treatment plant.  …

The Bay-Delta is the subject of considerable national public awareness due to the sociopolitical and socioeconomic tension surrounding the plight of the endangered delta smelt (Hypomesus transpacificus) and the court-ordered modifications of water diversion projects to protect the species.”  “New research links decline of endangered California delta smelt to nutrient pollution“

“A recent study of ocean life in the depths near Greenland has turned up some 38 species of fish, 10 of which, like this anglerfish, were previously unknown to the region–and are quite ugly too. Scientists suspect that global warming may be drawing these unphotogenic fish to the region.

Although the study, conducted by the Natural History Museum of Denmark in the waters near Greenland, found 10 new species previously unclassified, many of the other fish appear to have recently moved to the area from elsewhere. According to the National Geographic, human activity and changes to their normal habitats may be what’s driving them north.

Rising ocean temperatures due to global warming–which could be drawing unfamiliar fishes to the region–and increased deep-sea fishing may be responsible for the spike in fresh fish faces seen off Greenland.”

“Strange new fish discovered near Greenland“  h/t Larry Tomasson

“A highly anticipated study of water diversions in California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta has found federal efforts to protect endangered fish “scientifically justified” but added that problems facing delta smelt and chinook salmon are not entirely caused by thirsty farms south of the estuary.

With release of the study today, the National Academy of Sciences stepped into a battle over a pair of federal biological opinions that limit water for farmers to protect the fish. But what many had hoped would clear up controversy over water restrictions has been greeted as another mixed analysis of the region’s overlapping environmental stressors.

The National Academies’ National Research Council said the diversions ordered under the bi-ops from the National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife Service are sound, but the timing of methods to protect fish from pumps on the south end of the delta — the water source for many farmers in the San Joaquin Valley — is “less well-supported” by science.  …

“The committee concluded that in winter, high reverse river flows from high levels of pumping probably adversely affect smelt. Therefore, reducing the high reverse flows to decrease mortality of smelt is scientifically justified,” the NAS report says. “However, the data do not permit confident identification of when to limit reverse flows of the rivers or a confident assessment of the benefits fish receive by reducing reverse flows. … As a result, the implementation of this action needs to be accompanied by careful monitoring, adaptive management and additional analyses.”"  “National Academies Deliver Mixed Message on Calif. Delta Dilemma“

With Antarctic sea ice extent expanding for decades and the continent as a whole on a 50-year cooling trend this article in the Telegraph seems, well, absurd, but typical of the hysterical nonsense that passes for science in the field of climastrology:

Rising temperatures in the oceans around Antarctica could lead to the continent’s penguins being replaced by jellyfish, scientists have warned.

The results of the largest ever survey of Antarctic marine life reveal melting sea ice [NOT!] is decimating krill populations, which form an integral part of penguins’ diets.

The six-inch-long invertebrates, also eaten by other higher Southern Ocean predators such as whales and seals, are being replaced by smaller crustaceans known as copepods.

These miniscule copepods, measuring just half a millimetre long, are too small for penguins but ideal for jellyfish and other similarly tentacled predators.  “Penguins in Antarctica to be replaced by jellyfish due to global warming“  h/t Climate Realists

“And yet, despite all of the above [evidence that polar bears are not endangered], on May 14th 2008 U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species,” in effect threatening more of them with death … (stick with me here.)  …

In 1972 … the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited [polar bear] hunting in Alaska. (And no, it’s not the hunting ban that has caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.)

So after 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar bears in Canada. But Kempthorne’s proclamation (upheld by Interior Sec. Salazar in the current administration) means that U.S. hunters will be barred by law from bringing their trophy bear skins into the U.S. …

[Before the proclamation] hunters (primarily from the U.S.) had been paying $30,000 for the chance of whacking a polar bear during a grueling hunt in the Canadian arctic on dog-sleds and in sub-zero weather.  …

Recreational hunters (again, overwhelmingly from the U.S) pumped $3 million a year into Eskimo communities for polar bear hunts. These Inuit communities get a quota of bear tags (licenses) from the Canadian government to use as they see fit. They can hunt the bears themselves for the meat, and for the roughly $1000 per hide if they sell it. Or they can sell the tag to a recreational hunter for $30,000 –serve as his guide, (i.e. he can experience most of their culture’s traditional and integral parts of the hunt) and still keep the meat. Only a federal bureaucrat could miss the implications here.

In fact, these hunts being such an integral part of their culture, a few Inuits elect to retain the tags for themselves to do the killing. The new ruling means that now they’ll probably keep them all. A recreational hunt lasts a few days and—like all hunting–does not always climax with kill. But the tag is considered used once it’s sold to a recreational hunter, kill or no kill. On the other hand, Inuit hunters always kill a bear because they have months to fill that tag. So now that U.S. recreational hunters are barred by U.S. law from bringing home their conversation-piece rug, the Inuits have no choice but to keep their tags, assuring that more polar bears will be killed.”  “Um — about those vanishing polar bears …“

“A plan that could have brought relief to the drought ravaged central valley was rejected by the Department of Interior. Indolent bureaucrats killed the project so that “experts” could review the scientific underpinnings of the project.  No federal “experts” have provided any suggestions as to how farmers in the Valley are expected to survive.

The proposed solution for sparing the stupid Delta Smelt, a tiny fish prone to suicide, was to construct barriers in river channels in hopes of appeasing environmental bedlamites and spare the Valley from complete decimation.

“The idea is to submerge massive barriers in river channels to prevent the delta smelt from swimming toward certain death at water pumps in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The experiment, called the ‘Two Gates project, comes up at water rallies and political strategy sessions among San Joaquin Valley lawmakers who support the idea. They hope it will bring more water to 25 million residents and millions of farmland acres.  …

But there are serious hurdles ahead. The public hasn’t seen any details. There is no funding yet for the $26 million project. And environmental analysis of such projects can take years.”

No funding?  What’s a trifling $26 million to the current administration?  Twenty-six million is a mere rounding error in Obamaland.  Why not tap the slush fund known as stimulus?

Yet another deranged liberal program causing incalculable suffering.”  “California’s Two Gate Solution Rejected“

But wait, we’re not done yet! If you act right now we’ll double your order!

“A tragedy is unfolding in the world today.  Climate change is threatening one of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet.

Polar bears – they’re struggling to survive. The ice is melting all around them, and food is becoming harder to find as they lose their hunting grounds.

Climate Change – it’s happening right now. And it’s leaving mothers weaker and unable to provide for their young, and cubs dying without enough to eat

As the struggle and the search for food continues, polar bears are hanging on for survival.

Polar bears are on their way to extinction. If we don’t act now, most will die in our children’s lifetime.

But you can help change that.  Call now and join the wildlife rescue team.  For just $16 a month you’ll be part of the most ambitious effort to save wildlife and wild places the world has ever seen.  …

Call the number on your screen or join online right now and you’ll receive this polar bear photo and an exclusive WWF T-shirt, free, with our thanks.

If we don’t act now it could be too late for the polar bears.

It’s all up to us.  Please call or go online, right now.”  “Noah Wyle PSA Polar Bears“

“An offline Florida power plant is providing a warm-water refuge for several hundred manatees who like the Sunshine State’s human residents are shivering in record low cold temperatures.

Close to 400 of the bulky, wrinkly and endangered sea mammals, including mothers and young, have congregated at an outlet on Florida’s Intracoastal Waterway where heated water flows from the Riviera Power Plant operated by the Florida Power and Light Company, a unit of the FPL Group Inc (FPL.N).

The oil- and gas-fired plant was taken off line last year for modernization but FPL has installed a special heating system to keep waters at an attractively balmy temperature for the manatees who have been gathering at the outlet for years.

“The water that discharges into the area where the manatees gather comes out at 92 degrees Fahrenheit (33 Celsius). It gives a nice combination by the time it mixes with the natural water … it’s very comfortable for them and they enjoy it,” FPL spokesperson Sharon Bennett told Reuters.”  “Brr! Florida Manatees Warm Up At Power Plant Hot Tub“

““While sea ice melts away and the oceans warm, the Obama administration is frozen in inaction. Instead of protecting penguins and taking meaningful steps to address global warming,” said Shaye Wolf, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, “our government is dragging its feet while penguins are marching toward extinction.“”  “Suit to Be Filed Over Delay in Protection for Penguins Hurt by Climate Change and Industrial Fisheries“

“Monkey species will become ‘increasingly at risk of extinction’ because of global warming, according to new research, published this week. It reveals that populations of monkeys and apes in Africa that depend largely on a diet of leaves may be wiped out by a rise in annual temperatures of two degrees Celsius. …

The researchers used climate models coupled with an analysis of quantitative data on the behaviour, diet and group size of different primate species across the world.” “African Leaf-Eating Primates ‘Likely to Be Wiped Out’ by Climate Change“

Primates evolved and thrived in Africa during many, many periods of much warmer temperatures than today. What happened to “peer review” with this “research” paper? Could it be, as Cliff Mass says, “Poor papers with significant technical problems, but reflecting the “official” line, get published easily, while papers indicating the global warming is weaker or delayed, go through hurdle after hurdle”?
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“The governor and legislative Democrats in 2006 approved a new law requiring California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020. This 2020 vision was myopic, and the state has been losing industry, jobs and people ever since. But the governor persists, warning Wednesday that “we must also be prepared if climate change continues to worsen.” …

“Combined with the $21 billion deficit we’re facing in the coming year, this shows we ought to be focusing our attention on more mundane things — like living within our means,” [State Assemblyman Chuck] DeVore [R-Irvine] says. “To use this all-encompassing rubric of climate change as a power grab to usurp property rights is something we shouldn’t be doing.”

While the state focuses on windmills, solar panels and electric cars, vast offshore oil resources go undeveloped and nuclear power is ignored. An energy-starved California, according to a recent Milken Institute report, has lost nearly 400,000 manufacturing jobs.

Large areas of the state are being turned back into desert due to a man-made drought to save obscure species of fish such as the delta smelt in the San Joaquin Valley.

More than 450,000 acres have been allowed to go barren as farmers in an area that once fed the world line up at food pantries. Unemployment, at 17% across the Valley, reaches upward of 40% in towns such as Mendota (2006 population: 9,752).

It’s no surprise, then, that Californians have been voting with their feet, leaving the state in droves. Between 2005 and 2007, some 2.14 million fled to other states, while only 1.44 million moved in from other states. The state motto seems to be “Go East, Young Man.” …

An article in the October edition of Trends magazine, titled “America’s Future: California vs. Texas,” states rather starkly: “From the Great Depression on, California was a dream destination for Americans. Now it looks like a nightmare, taking on new debt at a rate of $25 million a day.”" “California should copy Texas”
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“Ocean acidification could cause fish to become “fatally attracted” to their predators, according to scientists.

A team studying the effects of acidification – caused by dissolved CO2 – on ocean reefs found that it leaves fish unable to “smell danger”.

Young clownfish that were reared in the acidified water became attracted to rather than repelled by the chemical signals released by predatory fish.” “Acid oceans leave fish at more risk from predators“

“Melting of the Arctic sea ice due to global warming is diluting surface waters and this is endangering some species of shellfish which need minerals in the water to form their shells and skeletons, scientists have found.

In a paper published in Science, they warned that this has serious implications for ecosystems in the Arctic.

“Organisms that are likely to be affected are from the family of pteropods, also mussels and clams on the sea floor,” said Fiona McLaughlin, research scientist at Canada’s Institute of Ocean Sciences’s department of fisheries and oceans. …

“It puts the food chain at risk. These organisms are a food source for fish that are a food source for seals and bears. The food chain in the Arctic is quite a short one, so it’s quite vulnerable,” she told Reuters by telephone.” “Melting Sea Ice Dilutes Water, Endangers Sea Life“

“Global warming is happening faster than expected and at worst could raise sea levels by up to 2 meters (6-1/2 ft) by 2100, a group of scientists said on Tuesday in a warning to next month’s U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen.

In what they called a “Copenhagen Diagnosis,” updating findings in a broader 2007 U.N. climate report, 26 experts urged action to cap rising world greenhouse gas emissions by 2015 or 2020 to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

“Climate change is accelerating beyond expectations,” a joint statement said …” “Climate Change Quickens, Seas Feared Up 2 meters“

“Since the 1997 international accord to fight global warming, climate change has worsened and accelerated — beyond some of the grimmest of warnings made back then.

As the world has talked for a dozen years about what to do next, new ship passages opened through the once frozen summer sea ice of the Arctic. In Greenland and Antarctica, ice sheets have lost trillions of tons of ice. Mountain glaciers in Europe, South America, Asia and Africa are shrinking faster than before. …

Even the gloomiest climate models back in the 1990s didn’t forecast results quite this bad so fast.

“The latest science is telling us we are in more trouble than we thought,” Janos Pasztor, climate adviser to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.” “Warming’s Impacts Sped up, Worsened Since Kyoto“

“The effects of climate change have driven women in communities in coastal areas in poor countries like the Philippines into dangerous work, and sometimes even the flesh trade, a United Nations official said.

Suneeta Mukherjee, country representative of the United Nations Food Population Fund (UNFPA), said women in the Philippines are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the country.

“Climate change could reduce income from farming and fishing, possibly driving some women into sex work and thereby increase HIV infection,” Mukherjee said during the Wednesday launch of the UNFPA annual State of World Population Report in Pasay City.” “‘Climate change pushes poor women to prostitution, dangerous work’“
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“Over the next five years, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) plans to make climate change its “highest priority.”

According to its new “Action Plan” released last month, the branch of the U.S. Department of Interior charged with protecting fish, wildlife and plants will focus first and foremost on the global weather.

“Climate change must become our highest priority,” a fact sheet attached to the plan said. “Consequently, we will deploy our resources, creativity and energy in a long-term campaign to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and safeguard fish, wildlife and their habitats.”

The Fish and Wildlife Service said it plans to “reach out to the larger conservation community to tackle climate change.”

The Action Plan is part of an overall strategic report titled “Rising to the Challenge: Strategic Plan for Responding to Accelerating Climate Change.”” “Climate Change Will Be Its Highest Priority, Says U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service“
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“California’s drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley [f]armers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt.

There was a time when the San Joaquin Valley was the most productive agricultural region in the world. It was a large part of what made the Golden State golden.

Now it’s a place where farmers no longer farm, but instead line up at food banks to feed the families of those who once fed the rest of the country and a good chunk of the world.

The largest man-made agricultural disaster since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s is unfolding in the valley due to yet another attempt to protect a fish declared to be threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This damage is being done to protect the hypomesus transpacificus, otherwise known as the delta smelt.

Last December the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in its finite wisdom, issued something called a biological opinion imposing water restrictions on the San Joaquin Valley and surrounding areas to protect the habitat of this tiny fish. The authorities forget the species homo sapiens, also part of the ecosystem, is threatened.

Its habitat is being destroyed — by government edict.

To protect the smelt, billions of gallons of water from the mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channeled away from farms and into the ocean, while farmers watched their crops wither and their once-productive land become barren.

Kern County authorities say that 145,000 acres that are usually irrigated with this water were killed or underirrigated last year. The loss was estimated at $100 million in that county alone. The University of California, Davis, estimates that San Joaquin Valley farm revenue losses ranged from $482 million to $647 million. Total economic losses could hit $3 billion this year.

In affected areas, the jobless rate is at 14%, with farming towns such as Mendota experiencing unemployment near 40%. In August, 50 valley mayors signed a letter to President Obama asking him to come and witness the devastation firsthand.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that the feds have ordered turned off. In June, the administration denied his request to designate California a federal disaster area because of the drought even though the U.S. Drought Monitor lists 43% of the state as being under “severe drought” conditions.” “Fish vs. farmers“

Looks like Obama will have to make a “walrus rule” now like the “polar bear rule“.

“A second Arctic marine mammal moved closer to an Endangered Species listing due to global warming Tuesday as a petition to grant the Pacific walrus protection passed its first review.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced that a petition presented by the Center for Biological Diversity provided substantial information that listing the walrus as threatened or endangered was warranted.

The determination was based in part on projected [by failed climate models] changes in sea ice associated with climate change. The Center for Biological Diversity and other groups successfully petitioned for protection of polar bears using the same argument.” “Pacific walrus closer to gaining federal protections” h/t JunkScience today

“On Aug. 13, ExxonMobil pleaded guilty in federal court to killing 85 birds that had come into contact with crude oil or other pollutants in uncovered tanks or waste-water facilities on its properties. The birds were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which dates back to 1918. The company agreed to pay $600,000 in fines and fees.

ExxonMobil is hardly alone in running afoul of this law. Over the past two decades, federal officials have brought hundreds of similar cases against energy companies. In July, for example, the Oregon-based electric utility PacifiCorp paid $1.4 million in fines and restitution for killing 232 eagles in Wyoming over the past two years. The birds were electrocuted by poorly-designed power lines.

Yet there is one group of energy producers that are not being prosecuted for killing birds: wind-power companies. And wind-powered turbines are killing a vast number of birds every year.

A July 2008 study of the wind farm at Altamont Pass, Calif., estimated that its turbines kill an average of 80 golden eagles per year. The study, funded by the Alameda County Community Development Agency, also estimated that about 10,000 birds—nearly all protected by the migratory bird act—are being whacked every year at Altamont.

Altamont’s turbines, located about 30 miles east of Oakland, Calif., kill more than 100 times as many birds as Exxon’s tanks, and they do so every year. But the Altamont Pass wind farm does not face the same threat of prosecution, even though the bird kills at Altamont have been repeatedly documented by biologists since the mid-1990s.

The number of birds killed by wind turbines is highly variable. And biologists believe Altamont, which uses older turbine technology, may be the worst example. But that said, the carnage there likely represents only a fraction of the number of birds killed by windmills. Michael Fry of the American Bird Conservancy estimates that U.S. wind turbines kill between 75,000 and 275,000 birds per year. Yet the Justice Department is not bringing cases against wind companies.

“Somebody has given the wind industry a get-out-of-jail-free card,” Mr. Fry told me. “If there were even one prosecution,” he added, the wind industry would be forced to take the issue seriously.” “Windmills Are Killing Our Birds” h/t Green Hell Blog

“Welcome to Mendota, Calif. Its population is 10,000. Most of its families work in farming; the town used to be called the “cantaloupe capital of the world.” Today, unemployment hovers around 41 percent. The town is now known as “the food-line capital,” says Mendota’s mayor, Robert Silva. This is the Dust Bowl, circa 2009. …

Why are the communities of Fresno County suffering so deeply? Because in December 2008, the federal government [as a result of enviro lawsuits] decided that Fresno County, a farming-rich area which provides half of America’s vegetables, no longer needed water. The farmers whose ancestors built the canals to irrigate the Central Valley have been totally cut off from their water supply, even though they’re still paying bills for it. Hundreds of acres of prime farming land lie fallow, crops withered and dead.

All because the federal government thinks that smelt—tiny 5- to 7-centimeter fish—are more important than human beings. It seems that these annoying little creatures have been filleted by the water pumping systems necessary to make irrigation possible. They are now endangered.

As the Fish and Wildlife Service put it, “it is the Service’s biological opinion that the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, as proposed, are likely to jeopardize the continued existence of the delta smelt.” In other words, all water supply must be shut down, lest the world lose the incomparably valuable smelt.

President Obama has two choices here. First, he can call off his dogs at the Fish and Wildlife Service—after all, the Department of the Interior is answerable to the president. Second, he can declare Fresno County a disaster area and provide federal aid.

So far, he has done nothing. …

“It could be,” Silva says. “I can’t prove that, but it seems to me that if this happened in New Hampshire or New York City, the relief would be there automatically. As for us, we have to beg agencies. We have to beg them to put food on the table for these people. And they still won’t open the spigots.” …

But most of all, it’s the farmers in the Central Valley who will suffer. Apparently, President Obama’s stimulus is available for labor union payoffs and big government boondoggles. Hispanic farmers are another story.” “Obama’s Failure to Help Farming Community May Spring from Racism, Hispanic Democrat Says” Prior posts here
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“[T]oday the San Joaquin Valley is being transformed into a dust bowl. Hundreds of thousands of acres are fallow, while almond and plum trees are being left to die in the scorching sun. Tens of thousands of people have been tossed out of work—the town of Mendota alone has an unemployment rate of about 40%—and the lines for food donations stretch down streets. The reason? There isn’t enough water to go around this year, and the Obama administration is drawing up new reasons to divert more of it from farms and people and into the San Francisco Bay. …

Some claim that California is facing a three-year-old drought. But, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources, California reservoirs have received 80% of their normal amount of water and precipitation in the northern Sierras has been 95% of its yearly average this year. So why isn’t there more water for farms? Because theirs is a regulatory-mandated drought. The 1973 Endangered Species Act requires that the government take steps to save endangered species. In California, that’s meant diverting vast sums of water into rivers and streams to protect fish. Those diversions this year have forced federal authorities to decide who to serve—fish or farmers.

On Dec. 15, 2008, the Bush administration’s Fish and Wildlife Service chose fish, a decision driven by a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2006 by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups. To settle the suit, the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to divert more than 150 billion gallons of water this year away from farmers south of San Francisco in hopes of protecting the Delta smelt—a three-inch bait fish. The water is now flowing underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, the Delta smelt isn’t a particularly attractive species to protect when it means throwing Americans out of work. On June 4, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared that delivering water to farms in the San Joaquin Valley would harm killer whales in the Pacific[!] And to save the whales, the Obama administration is now demanding even greater water restrictions beyond what has been diverted for the smelt. …

What is precious and what President Barack Obama should come to see for himself are the 40,000 people in the valley who are desperate for water so they can get back to work.” “It’s Fish Versus Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley” Prior post here
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