By calling California’s water shortage “the Central Valley water crisis,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein has attempted to delegitimize most of California, implying that Central Valley farmers have more right to water than the rest of the state. <\/p>\n
Why are Central Valley jobs more important than Delta and Northern California jobs? Why are almond farmers more important than fishermen? Because they have more money?<\/p>\n
Feinstein wants to “make technical modifications to the biological opinions that restrict Delta pumping.” In plain English, she wants to overrule the conclusions reached by scientists who have spent years studying salmon and the Delta. Feinstein calls ignoring scientific truth “a fair, short-term compromise,” but it will only be short term if the drought is really over, which is unlikely. <\/p>\n
Our reservoirs are nowhere near full. Rain and snowfall totals so far are slightly above average, which is actually below normal for an El Niño event. Did you remember that we are having an El Niño event? California’s drought could last for years. Most of the scientific community believes we are in the first few years of a long-term dry-weather cycle. If so, Feinstein’s “short-term compromise” will prove as useless as it is destructive.<\/p>\n
California salmon survived previous prolonged droughts. But they may go extinct during this one. Extinctions are the norm when politicians are allowed to ignore sound scientific opinion. That’s why the Endangered Species Act was passed. <\/p>\n
The whole point was to force politicians to pay as much attention to long-term sustainability as they do to short-term profit. That being the case, it is not surprising that politicians are constantly trying to get around the Endangered Species Act, claiming that it is inflexible or even broken. <\/p>\n
Feinstein says the 2003 New Mexico silvery minnow bill furnishes a precedent for her current attempt to circumvent the Endangered Species Act, but her claim is specious. The 2003 bill neither invalidated the biological opinion, nor provided an exemption to the ESA, so it bears little resemblance to Feinstein’s rider.<\/p>\n
I am sorry that Central Valley farmers are hurting. I am sorry that lots of Californians are hurting. But I know that, in the long run, a California with salmon is better than a California without salmon. If you agree, you had better be prepared to start fighting for the water salmon need to survive. Because there are plenty of people fighting to take it away from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By calling California’s water shortage “the Central Valley water crisis,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein has attempted to delegitimize most of California, implying that Central Valley farmers have more right to water than the rest of the state. Why are Central Valley jobs more important than Delta and Northern California jobs? Why are almond farmers more important […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4325,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371740\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}