Officials Friday said that for the first time ever, the State Water Project that helps supply a majority of Californians may be unable to make any deliveries except to maintain public health and safety.
They also said they were cutting releases from large reservoirs in the northern part of the state to preserve supplies in the face of what could be the worst drought in modern California history.
Very important point (same link):
The State Water Resources Control Board announced that it is temporarily dropping requirements for reservoir releases to maintain environmental standards in California’s water hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
Why this is a big deal:
You have almost certainly never heard of the Delta smelt and, in all honesty, nor should you have. As fish go, it is undistinguished. Inedible, short-lived, and growing to a maximum length of just under three inches, smelt are of interest to nobody much — except, that is, to the implacable foot soldiers of the modern environmental movement, some of whom have recently elevated the smelt’s well-being above all else that has traditionally been considered to be of value. Human beings, the production of food, and the distribution of life-enabling water can all be damned, it seems. All hail the smelt, the most important animal in America.
[snip]
As a direct result of the overwrought concern that a few well-connected interest groups and their political allies have displayed for a fish — and of a federal Endangered Species Act that is in need of serious revision — hundreds of billions of gallons of water that would in other areas have been sent to parched farmland have been diverted away from the Central Valley and deliberately pushed out under the Golden Gate Bridge and into the Pacific Ocean, wasted forever, to the raucous applause of Luddites, misanthropes, and their powerful enablers.
The water situation is so bad, in other words, that Moonbeam Brown has decided to cut loose the delta smelt* and let it die. …Because surely that is what is going to happen if there’s no water diverted to save this inedible, useless fish, right? I mean, if it turns out that shutting down the diversion of freshwater to keep the smelt habitat hydrated has no effect on the damned things, then why keep doing it?
…Oh, right, religious fanaticism. Somebody should explain to the Greenies the concept of separation of Church and State.
Moe Lane
PS: BY THE WAY (Charles Cooke, again):
I ask about the politics. Does this divide neatly along party lines? “This shouldn’t be a political issue,” Gutierrez tells me, diplomatically. “This is an everyone issue.” Still, there is certainly an opportunity here for California’s moribund Republicans. Polling conducted by El Agua Es de Todos shows that Hispanics are willing to consider anyone who will take the water issue seriously. Currently, Hispanics in the Central Valley swing Democratic by 70 to 30 percent. If the generic Republican made an issue out of the water problem? It would swing to 60–40 Republican.
PPS: Yes, I know that it’s not the fish’s fault.
*To be fair: Charlie Cooke seems to think that Governor Brown kind of hates the delta smelt, too. I am willing to accept that such a thing is at least theoretically possible.
Leftists, for all their stupid, are capable of pragmatism. They don’t do it *well*, but .. they can do it.
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Mew
“…Oh, right, religious fanaticism.”
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Don’t you hate those who push their morals on us, amirite?
Just snarking! 😀
If the parochials realized they were parochial, they wouldn’t be parochials.
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Mew
You may feel free to substitute rubes, in the above example, if you like .. but “Hey Rube!” doesn’t say “parochial” to me … it says “Stop thief!”..
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It used to be the classic example of the cultural melting pot in Chicago – at the Maxwell Street market, a hispanic vendor would yell that allegedly yiddish phrase and the irish beat cop would understand .. and go crack skulls.
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Mew
The Delta Smelt will survive just fine. The only effect of reducing the fresh water into the delta will be that the smelt will move upstream to where they find the proper salinity.
After this is ‘discovered’ do you think they will be taken off of the ‘endangered’ list? Yeah, don’t hold your breath.
As much as want to see the Delta Smelt go to that great polluted estuary in the sky; I am not as sure that they intend to let it go; if only because it is such a great tool against the Central Valley. From the original full statement by the State of California saying that water allocations are cut as reported on CBS:
“Our goal is to preserve enough water to maintain salinity control in the Delta to get us through the summer to get us to next year,” Cowin said.
referring to the Sacramento-San Joaquin estuary. Cowin, of course, being the Director of the Department of Water Resources.
I think that they are going to prioritize the Delta Smelt if they possibly can. It may stay dry enough so that they can’t save them; but if they get the rain, they always will over saving farms.