California has been getting plenty of rain for a couple of years—the State even has declared its drought over—and so reservoirs are nearly full and aquifers are refilling.
…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 problem, to the extent it’s a legitimate problem (spoiler: it isn’t), is that those reservoirs and aquifers are in northern California, and the Central Valley…isn’t. That water must pass through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to get to the Central Valley. Fish swim in the Delta, though, including some that are on the Endangered Species Act’s lists.
California’s environmentalists have functional control over the Delta, and they insist that fish are more important than food.
And downstream fallout—here’s just one example:
The nonprofit Latino Equity, Advocacy & Policy is converting a former cantaloupe and asparagus plant into a center to teach new work skills.
Maybe California’s farmers should look hard at eschewing planting for one year; leave their fields, en masse, to lie fallow. Alternatively, look into leasing their farm fields for that year (or longer if the deal works well enough) to ranchers to graze their herds. Either of these would be good for the fields, too.
Let California’s environmentalistas and regulators live without California’s farm crops for an extended period of time.
The rest of us need to move to reclaim the US Bureau of Reclamation and get it back under control or entirely rescinded and its employees, top to bottom, returned to the private sector.