Previous post
Next post
Think that’s an exaggeration?
California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America’s premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.
The state’s water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.
For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year’s government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley’s water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.
The result has already been devastating for the state’s farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years. In August, 50 mayors from the San Joaquin Valley signed a letter asking President Obama to observe the impact of the draconian water rules firsthand.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he “doesn’t have the authority to turn on the pumps” that would supply the delta with water, or “otherwise, they would be on.” He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a “God Squad” is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.
The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor’s request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a “severe drought” in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth.
This farmland that has seen their water supply shut off supplies half of America’s vegetables. This impacts over 38 million people. And these farmers are now unable to feed their families, unable to sell their crops, and finding themselves in food lines. They’re still paying water bills, but the water has been shut off. And for what? To keep a three-inch fish alive? Since when is a tiny fish more important than feeding America’s families?
People are calling it the Dust Bowl. But environmentalists don’t care. Their priorities are fish first, families second. Animals first, humans second. These farmers ancestors’ built the water canals in order to irrigate their land, and the federal government just swooped in and shut it off. Obama has the power to turn the water back on. The Fish and Wildlife Service is part of the Department of the Interior, which answers to the president. Yet Obama has done nothing.
Just for fun, let’s imagine that an Al Qaeda operative had snuck in and done this as part of a covert operation to devastate California economically. It would be an act of war. Yet right now, the United States government is doing it to its own people.
Yes, the United States. Who would have thought that the United States could do something so tyrannical? It’s an action you would have expected out of the Soviet Union. It’s the type of thing Iraqis had to fear when they were living under Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule. But here it is, happening right here to Americans who are working hard to feed their families. And this doesn’t just affect the California farmers. If these farmers can’t grow their crops, food prices across America will skyrocket, and there will be many more families struggling to feed their families in these economic recession. Plenty of families have their belts tightened as far as they can go and they can’t afford to see their groceries bills spike. But they undoubtedly will.
It is Obama’s responsibility to remedy this situation. This is tyrannical and it is practically an act of domestic terrorism. It’s time for Obama to decide where his allegiances lie: with farmers who are feeding America or with the environmental lobbyists who are making them starve.
Pay attention to how Obama handles this. It’ll be an extremely telling moment, and one that will certainly let us know where Obama’s priorities lie. We already know that environmentalists would rather see farmers die than a few tiny fish. The question is, will Obama agree?
Gotta disagree with you on this one, Cassie, although I am no friend of the environmental movement.
Henry Hazlitt wrote a wonderful book title “Economics in One Lesson” (everyone should read it). The basic premise of the book is that economic decisions need to be looked at not only for how they impact those most directly affected in the short term, but for how those decisions affect all groups both short and long term. The ‘hurting farmers’ of the Central Valley need to be examined more carefully. In the first place, mom and pop farm operations are only a small fraction of the farms operating in the valley; most of your farm stuff is grown by large agri-business interests. And all California farmers, big and small, have gotten a free ride for too long at the expense of California taxpayers. California farmers get the benefit of subsidized water, stored and delivered by subsidized water projects, in order to grow subsidized farm products — many of which are water-intensive crops, such as corn, cotton, and rice, that shouldn’t be grown in semi-arid environments (and couldn’t be without the aforementioned subsidies). Farmers and their allies may decry the political machinations employed by environmentalists, but the farmers themselves have used the same tactics for years to avoid paying the true cost for water, as well as to avoid true market competition. Think about that the next time you ponder the high costs of produce at your local market.
Lost in all the fuss over suffering farmers is the plight of suffering fishermen. California’s salmon fishery is in a state of collapse, and the fishermen whose boats are idle from Monterey to Crescent City do, in fact, suffer as a result of someone’s decision to extract water from the delta. The delta smelt is not just an insignificant 3-inch fish — it’s part of a food pyramid, with salmon near the apex. Diverted water kills fish, either indirectly by altering the environment (changing flow regimes, elevating temperatures, creating barriers to migration, etc.), but in many cases directly, such as when outmigrating juvenile salmon are sucked out of the delta by pumps and dumped on another subsidized cotton field. Cheap water isn’t cheap; there are hidden costs, costs born by wildlife, born by other water resource stakeholders, and costs born by taxpayers and consumers.
So please pardon me if I am not completely sympathetic to the troubles of the poor farmers, but they’ve been living at the public trough for generations. If they want the government to lay off on enforcing ESA, then fine…but while we’re at it, why don’t we play fair and yank all the subsidies, too. After all, isn’t the free market a cornerstone of conservative ideology?
Glenn Cassel AMH1(AW) USN Retired says: I was posted to NAS Lemoore, CA from 1985 to 1989. On various trips through the Central Valley with the family, it was amazing to see the varied number of things grown and the quantities. Almonds,olives, grapes for both wine and the table, fruit and cotton. Cotton was grown on the Air Station on the land between the Admin area and the airfield itself.
There were fruit and vegetable stands all along some of the highways and back roads away from CA 99. This agricultural bonanza was evident in the economy of even places like Fresno and Visalia.
And now due to something that I would use for bait, the environmentalists are destroying that.
Even comedian Paul Rodriguez has gotten on the soap box trying to right this terrible wrong. He grew up in that part of the Central Valley being affected. And it directly affects his family who farm in the area.
It is simply a case of the elite making decisions that they do not consider the consequences of.
Time for a vigilance committee.
ECM says: jenkinsbrigade:
And nowhere in your post do you deny that this is about a three-inch fish versus humans, which is what it is.
You seem to be stating that this is quid pro quo for the ‘evil’ farmers, but that isn’t what’s going on here–they are strangling the water supply because ‘environmentalists’ are screaming about a fish! A bloody fish is taking priority over human beings!
This is not a debate about paying fair share for water, etc., something that can and should take place (presuming everything you’ve said is accurate), but about a 3-inch fish holding thousands and thousands of people hostage–if you can defend that, by all means do so, but please spare us the mis-direction and obfuscation by conflating two, disparate, issues.
Sven The Inhaler says: Jenny, I was led to your site in a quest for information about this issue. I am astounded to see Jenkinsbrigade posted with a diametrically opposed opinion. So now I have the “Fair and Balanced” look that I could not get while tuning in to Fox News last night.
I still need more information, and will keep looking at this important issue.
There’s an old song about “The Farmer Feeds Us All”. It is not my choice to keep eating food from South America; I like my food from the U.S. of A. if I can get it. However, Uncle Sam and state governments have been luring farming families and agribusiness to
farm in barely arable land for more than a century, at great cost to our eventual ability to create food here.
Who hired Woody Guthrie up in Washington to write songs to inspire our public to use the electricity the rivers were generating? Uncle Sam! [Note: After writing 29 songs in 30 days, Woody decided that Uncle Sam generated too much bulls**t, and he quit.]
Bruce Brown’s “Mountain in the Clouds” explains how many wrong decisions regarding farming and water control in the Far Northwest helped to collapse the salmon stock in the area — the same salmon that by and large lent their organic matter to the rocky area and thereby CREATED the soil. Farming such an area needs to be balanced with sustaining that fish population. Jenkinsbrigade points out what Fox didn’t tell me — the delta smelt is the food for the salmon.
The question I have is — where does the water in the San Joaquin come from, and HOW MUCH IS THERE? Is it SNOWMELT? How much snowmelt or rain is expected next year? In 5, 10 and 20? Is the plan for farming, fishing, etc. sustainable over that period of time?
The US Government should not merely turn off the water. They have to have a plan, also. This problem didn’t crop up overnight. The hardship of the people in the Valley is real. Thanks for pointing that out. The relief must be immediate, but the plan for the future needs to be carefully done, in stages, to see if it is workable.
With respect, ECM, but the two issues are NOT disparate. The whole point of my post is that issues like farmers vs. fish cannot be taken in isolation. I’m not arguing that a fish is more valuable than a farmer, nor did I state that farmers are ‘evil’. However, to argue that the pumps should be left on simply because an individual fish is worth less than an individual human is extremely short-sighted. ALL such actions have consequences, some of which are foreseen, others which are not apparent until after the deed is done and often irreversible.
The various California water projects are perfect examples of this. I live near one of the major tributaries of the San Joaquin River; the San Joaquin and all of its tributaries are now dammed. When these projects were first built, planners presumed (incorrectly, as it turned out) that the San Joaquin’s salmon and steelhead runs could be preserved by hatcheries. These fish runs are all now endangered. Their loss was a hidden cost of the water projects. Those fish are no longer available to commercial and sport fishermen. No one has ever stopped to consider the financial loss to fishermen, boatyards, chandlers, fish processors, guides, guest service providers, and others affected by the loss of this resource. According to the logic by which any action is justifiable because some subgroup is hurting, it would be perfectly reasonable to remove the dams and restore river flows.
As I said before, I’m no friend of the environmentalists, and I’m well aware of the ways in which ESA has been abused. But the decision to build California’s water projects was a political decision. Some groups benefited, and others did not. Protecting (or not protecting) the delta smelt will also be a political decision from which some groups will benefit and others will not. To boil it all down to a fish vs. farmers scenario is a vast oversimplification of the problem.
Ima Nonymous says: The real issue that no one is talking about is that the drought in Mexifornia is self-inflicted. The only reason there is not enough water for both the little fishies and the farmers is that there is a state law here that mandates that cotton farmers receive as much water as they want at less than 1/4 market value before any one else receives even a single drop.
This law was enacted because some morons in Sacramento thought it would be just peachy if California could have its own native cotton crop. For those who don’t know, cotton is an extremely water-use intensive crop, which could not be commercially grown in California were it not for the ridiculous subsidy that is provided. Cotton requires near wet-land like conditions and high-humidity. Both of those environmental factors must be artificially created in the central valley, resulting in a tremendous waste of water.
If this one law were repealed, there would be no drought in California, ever.
From reading all the posts here, I come to the conclusion that any problems facing the people of California (and actually the rest of us as well), are the result of poor decisions and judgements made by political leaders, i.e., the government.
The same government many want to turn over our health-care to. I think not.
As R.R. was famous for saying, government is not the solution. Government is the problem.
Sara says: I got an idea. Instead of these farmers growing water gouging crops, grow hemp and cannabis instead. This way the farmers are just replacing their type of crop.
They can even start making their own hemp products. The problem I have with the United Sates, people just aren’t creative enough when it comes to solving problems. Too much red tape, but sometimes the solution can seem so simple to common people. Stop bickering on either side and compromise. Replace you corn, soy, and cotton for something less gluttonous that does not require so much darn water, as California is in a water shortage.
BobV says: I know it’s going to be rough, but leave. Get the hell out, now is going to be better than later.
Let that insane asylum collapse.
Hopefully it will be fast and thorough enough that their plague can’t spread and dies on the left side of the rockies.
debbie hamm says: common sense need apply here, species have been going extinct since the beginning of time. WE need, obviously, to turn the irrigation water on; period
Katie says: This is a part of the Illuminati master plan. For the people who are surprised at this are absolute idiots! Here is the problem with average people. That’s just it they’re average. What you call the Government is actually a Corporation of Bankers. You are all slaves! How do you take out your target? Simple. In this case as it has been for years the people are the target. First Make the people work for the Corp aka Gov. into a un-payable debt that the Corp aka Gov can live off of.. Then weaken the peoples immune system by chem trails.. Were on the right track Now!.. Add new sickness to play.Take food supply away that nourish the body… Yep you guest it Death! But you ask omg! Why would our own gov. want to kill the people? Wake up! You are just another Slave to them! Why do they Care? They Don’t! Take some cash out of your pocket. Look at the top of the bill. “Federal Reserve Note” A note is a loan= Debt! Now in the middle read what the debt tells you. Duh! Get it? Of course not. Common seance isn’t all that common.. http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20Government/Federal%20Reserve%20Scam/satan_on_our_dollar.htm People stop living in the cave and start doing something about it. Become a Sovereign. And do something about this situation http://discharge-debt.com/id73.htm
Dianne Glass says: I drove from the Bay Area to San Diego and back October 17-24. It is devastating to see what was the beautiful green San Juanquine Valley has turned into A DUST BOLW for 200 miles along highway 5. It is unbelievable that politicians we elected could completely ignore this tragedy. How do they sleep at night knowning thousands of people have no jobs and go hungry to save a three inch fish? When Feinstein had the chance to remedy the situation she supported the fish. We seriously need to get her out of office and elect someone who supports the PEOPLE of California and not a fish that doesn’t contribute ANYTHING.I don’t wish to hurt any living thing however, on a scale from one to ten, I vote 10 for the people. Drive through there and let me know how this can happen in The United States of America.
14 Comments