No, we aren’t desperate enough here on the West Coast to have looked into desalination plants—but give us time. Give us time.
First off, we may get a little relief from an oncoming storm in the Sierras:
State surveyors who measured California’s paltry Sierra Nevada snowpack on Tuesday might have fared better had they waited another day.
A winter storm carrying the prospect of up to five feet of snow for the Northern Sierra was expected to hit late Tuesday night and last through today, putting state road crews on alert while brightening the state’s water outlook heading into spring.
“After tonight, you probably don’t want to travel in the Sierra until Thursday,” said George Cline, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.
State surveyors from the Department of Water Resources measured the Sierra snowpack on Tuesday and found it just 30 percent of normal.
The Northern California storm could ease fears among the 29 agencies that depend on snowmelt delivered through the State Water Project that already are bracing for meager allocations. Some farmers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley have been told to expect just half of the water they requested for the spring and summer growing seasons.
The forecast calls for snow in both the Sierra and Coast mountain ranges with the biggest wallop coming above 6,500 feet, where accumulation could be between two and four feet, and up to five feet at the highest elevations.
So that’s cheery. One of the many, many things that’s been discussed in terms of California’s myriad water woes is enhancing our water storage system with more reservoirs, so that we can better absorb the moisture in the El Niño years and have it carry us through the dry ones. We are reliant on a rather primitive device, you will have gathered from the news item above: it’s called “snowpack,” and it’s not as efficient as we might hope—not the sort of thing Romans would have been content with. We wait for it to melt, and then fight tooth and nail between Northern, Southern, and Central California. (Guideline: where one lives is where the water legitimately belongs; any other part of the state that claims it should get water is a “special interest,” even if they are using it to grow food.)
But there’s another storm brewing as well: Federal legislators may be recognizing that our new habit of buying more and more of our food from Mexico may not be good for American self-reliance—or the trade deficit. And that the EPA’s regulations, which led to our turning off the spigots to some parts of the Central Valley, largely to save a bait fish (the delta smelt) may be placing an inedible fish above the needs of human beings.
(The environmentalists always say that other fish are harmed by the same issues that placed the delta smelt under threat, and therefore fisherman lose when we let the water flow, but I have yet to see really convincing arguments that that is the case. Likewise, I’m told by my relatives who read the Contra Costa Times faithfully that a lot of these farms aren’t family farms, but rather “agribusiness,” which impresses me not at all if they’re willing to keep feeding us. These people furthermore inform me that farmers pay too little for the water they get, which they say is publicly subsidized . . . and that last seems to me a reason for renegotiating the rate, rather than turning off the spigot completely. But then, that’s me.)
Once [the Central Valley was] a breadbasket for the nation, [but] the cutoff of irrigation water to the Valley has destroyed agriculture and tens of thousands of jobs as a tradeoff for the endangered fish. Now, however, voices of sanity in Congress have begun to speak on the man-made economic and agricultural disaster, as Rep. Devin Nunes builds support for his Sacramento-San Joaquin Water Reliability Act:
Nunes’ Sacramento-San Joaquin Water Reliability Act goes to a vote in the House Wednesday and if it passes, it will guarantee that water the farmers paid for finally gets to the parched Central Valley. It will put an end to the sorry stream of shriveled vineyards, blackened almond groves and unemployed farm workers standing in alms lines for bagged carrots from China.
The insanity of the current policies against some of America’s most productive farmers in one of the world’s richest farm belts is largely the work leftist politicians from the wealthy enclaves of the San Francisco Bay Area. This group has exerted its political muscle on the less politically powerful region that produces more than half the fruits and vegetables consumed in the U.S. — with $26 billion in annual sales.
“The bill restores the flow of water and establishes a framework for meaningful environmental improvements. It is a repudiation of the left’s assault on rural communities, which began with the decimation of the West’s timber industry and now is focused on Central Valley agriculture,” Nunes told IBD.
The stand-alone bill, H.R. 1837, marks the first time Central Valley water shortages and the federal role in creating them will be considered directly in Congress.
That in itself is a damning indictment of the federal government, whose laws have created the disaster in California. . . . The delay in addressing it makes the financial situation worse with each passing day for farmers in the Valley, and for workers who now have to subsist on government handouts rather than earnings from productive jobs.
If Barack Obama has his way, though, that situation will continue indefinitely. Late yesterday, the White House announced that Obama would veto Nunes’ bill because — I am not making this up — it would “unravel decades of work” on California water regulations … decades of work that brought California’s Central Valley to its current destruction:
The Administration strongly opposes H.R. 1837, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act because the bill would unravel decades of work to forge consensus, solutions, and settlements that equitably address some of California’s most complex water challenges.
H.R. 1837 would undermine five years of collaboration between local, State, and Federal stakeholders to develop the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan. It would codify 20-year old, outdated science as the basis for managing California’s water resources, resulting in inequitable treatment of one group of water users over another. And, contrary to 100 years of reclamation law that exhibits congressional deference to State water law, the bill would preempt California water law.
The bill also would reject the long-standing principle that beneficiaries should pay both the cost of developing water supplies and of mitigating any resulting development impacts, and would exacerbate current water shortages by repealing water pricing reforms that provide incentives for contractors to conserve water supplies.
Finally, H.R. 1837 would repeal the San Joaquin River Settlement Agreement, which the Congress enacted to resolve 18 years of contentious litigation. Repeal of the settlement agreement would likely result in the resumption of costly litigation, creating an uncertain future for river restoration and water delivery operations for all water users on the San Joaquin River.
The Administration strongly supports efforts to provide a more reliable water supply for California and to protect, restore, and enhance the overall quality of the Bay-Delta environment. The Administration has taken great strides toward achieving these co-equal goals through a coordinated Federal Action Plan, which has strengthened collaboration between Federal agencies and the State of California while achieving solid results. Unfortunately, H.R. 1837 would undermine these efforts and the progress that has been made. For this reason, were the Congress to pass H.R. 1837, the President’s senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.
Well, let’s take a look at California’s Central Valley and see what “five years of collaboration between local, State, and Federal stakeholders to develop the Bay-Delta Conservation Plan” has produced:
As for Obama’s stirring defense of federalism, the courts have already ruled that federal law — the Endangered Species Act — trumps California water law. That’s the reason why a federal judge turned off the water spigots more than two years ago, and why California can’t get them turned back on. If Obama was really concerned about federalism, he’d propose a repeal of the Endangered Species Act, which would also resolve this disaster. Instead, Obama threatens to veto any attempt by Congress to fix what federal law has already broken.
Hopefully, Nunes’ bill gets clear sailing through Congress and Obama gets his bluff called. If he wants to run as the Dust Bowl President in November, I say let him do it.
This President’s instincts seem to be, in most instances, “eff the workers.”
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
