The quantities of water that are wasted are mind-boggling. The sense of proportion and the priorities are also hard to believe. The environmentalists, however, want more. The want to stop the flow of water altogether. Only in a nation of incredible abundance can there be insane people whose focus is on insignificant fish instead of on people who are thrown out of work to keep the fanatics happy.
It would take about four average size minnow buckets to hold 305 3-inch Delta smelt, yet that is number of minnows responsible for diverting enough water to the ocean to provide a year’s supply for 800,000 California families.
800,000 acre-feet of water went to waste based on the science of four buckets of minnows. That is enough water to produce crops on 200,000 acres or 10 million tons of tomatoes; 200 million boxes of lettuce; 20 million tons of grapes. You get the picture?
This is not a drought year. The meager allotment is the result of too much water.
Heavy rains in November and December created a water flush through the Delta, herding the threatened Delta smelt/minnow south, closer to water pumps that move water from the Delta to the San Luis Reservoir, a storage terminal near Los Banos, Calif., that collects state and federal project water for movement south to urban Californians and San Joaquin Valley farmers. To protect the endangered minnows, the pumps were periodically stopped through the winter. No pumps; no water south. Just water west into the ocean.
The ridiculous environmental rules protecting the Delta minnow say the pumps can only gobble up 305 of the minnows in a water year, which ends Sept. 30. The count is already 232 — more than 75 percent of the limit. So to make sure pumps supply water to 25 million people and millions of acres of farmland consumes no more than four minnow buckets full of smelt — 800,000 acre-feet of water is gone.
Mike Wade, executive director of the California Farm Water Coalition points out, “Despite the heavy rain and snowfall earlier this water year in December, farmers will be receiving less water than last year, which was a dry water year.”
The initial 25 percent is the lowest since 2009 following a drought year, not a bureaucratic drought like this year.
Of course, radical environmentalists want to shut down the pumps totally, claiming groundwater banking south of the Delta would solve California’s growing water crisis.
The reality is that radical environmentalists do NOT want to actually solve the problem, they see humans as the ultimate interloper and cause of all the problems. In many environmental circles, you will hear the belief that the world is overpopulated and that the current world population of over 7 billion people should really be reduced to about 1 billion or less. Of course it is assumed these elites are the ones who will be part of the 1 billion, and they are anxious to see the rest of us go. Every time we are told the earth can only support the numbers that we have, a new resource or science is discovered or developed to put the lie to that belief. In the 1960’s and 1970’s we were told that the world was on the brink of starvation. The result was the “green” revolution that made it possible to feed many times the number we had previously. It made possible the development and hyper productive use of areas like Central California that produces bumper crops of various types of foods, so much that often we must throw away huge excesses of food.
The radical environmentalists want to stop that. They want to put millions and millions of acres off limits to people, and to herd people into tiny urban areas of 500 square foot apartments. They want to take away our cars and force us onto mass transit so we cannot travel outside of tiny prescribed areas. They demand that we stop using fossil fuels that have driven the huge wealth and productivity revolutions in the country and throughout the world. They are intent on limiting our use of natural resources such as water so that they can worship flora and fauna up the food chain and insist that people are equal to the rest of nature rather than above it and made to manage and oversee it. They are absolutely insane, and we have bought into much of their nonsense and are suffering needlessly because of their law suits and legislation that puts a 3 inch minnow about the needs of hundreds of thousands or millions of families. It would almost be funny in its preposterous perspective if it weren’t tragic due to the cost to human lives and families.
Source: westernfarmpress.com
Typical. Put the wall on east side of California.
They want control of the water, so they can stop whoever they want from growing crops or raising livestock. They intend on having total control of everything.