posted November 07, 2011 09:41 AM            

Question. Why did it take 3+ years to get this case heard in federal court?

With 40% unemployment in the Central Valley of California...which produces or produced much of America's fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and nuts what was the hold-up.

Farms were lost because enviro-nuts and their stooges in government shut off their water supply over a 2 inch fish. I wonder how many of the fruit and nut trees died.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Dept is a good place to start slashing the federal budget.

Farmers 1, Smelt 0 -- For Now
By Peter Hannaford
11.7.11 @ 6:07AM

Enviros favor the lives of two-inch fish over the livelihood of farmers. A federal judge has finally told them: Enough!

Nearly four years after environmentalists launched a campaign to kill farming in California's huge Central Valley, ostensibly to save a two-inch fish, the Delta Smelt, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the federal government's restrictions on farm water were "unworthy of the public trust."

It began in March 2007 when a local environmental group persuaded a county judge to tell the State of California to either shut down the huge pumps that move northern water into the Central Valley or obtain permits to legally kill the "endangered" Delta Smelt (the plaintiffs claimed such large numbers of them were being sucked into the pumps that the species was threatened with extinction).

A survey by the Delta Smelt Working Group, a committee of scientists from three federal and two state agencies, blamed pesticide use for many of the smelt deaths, but reasoned that a reduction in southbound pumping would leave more water to flow toward San Francisco Bay, thus promoting restoration of the smelt.

Claiming that water pumped out of the Delta to the Central Valley was the cause of the smelt decline, the Natural Resources Defense Council and allied environmentalist groups in 2008 sued the federal government. The Bush Administration's Department of the Interior then agreed to divert more than 150 billion gallons of water a year from the Central Valley to the San Joaquin River Delta in a vain effort to stop the decline of the smelt.

The federal government then asked the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a formal study. In March 2010 its report concluded that fish counting data were not fully reliable. The cautious scientists wrote, "At this time, the best that can be done is to design a strategy of pumping limitations that used the best available monitoring data and methods of statistical analysis to design an exploratory approach that would include enhanced field measurements to manage the pumping limitations adaptively while minimizing impacts on water users." (My italics.)

The harsh pumping restrictions continued. By this summer it had been three years since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had imposed a restriction on the system to divert an extra 81 billions gallons of water a year from the Central Valley system to flow out to the ocean.

The environmentalists that started it all seem to have achieved their objective: to drive down the production of the Central Valley so that it delivers less food to the nation. In the eyes of these warriors, the poverty of the valley's citizens is simply collateral damage.

Federal Judge Oliver Wanger changed this with the stroke of his pen. Of the three-year "diversion" program which had deprived the Central Valley of one-third of its water, he wrote, "cutting water exports to California cities and farms is 'arbitrary' and 'capricious.'"

During this water siege, some 85,000 very productive acres of almond and fruit trees and vegetables went out of production, millions of dollars of produce were not realized, dozens of farms were sold or foreclosed and unemployment rates in the area reached as high as 40 percent.

In the 36 years since the Endangered Species Act became law, not a single fish has been removed from its list. About this, California Rep. Devin Nunes wrote in a Wall Street Journal article, "Despite massive amounts of water diverted to help them, the smelt, sturgeon and salmon populations have continued to decline."

Judge Wanger's decision represented a victory for the plaintiffs, a group of Central Valley farmers represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation. Nevertheless, new battles await between the needs of large numbers of people and the status of various species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife has been a dervish of activity lately, recently making Endangered Species Act decisions on more than 500 of them. It will likely find itself locked in a battle with long drought-stricken areas of the Southeast as it makes decisions on a list of fish, salamanders and turtles up for "threatened" or "endangered" designation. At the center of the battle will be water.

posted November 07, 2011 04:09 PM            

do you not know that one of the prime ingredients in good fertilizer comes from fish?

you show no indication of understanding how the different elements of an environment feed off each other.

as a sidenote california has had plenty of water these three years (coincidental with this program as it happens) and production is just fine thanks.

as we have established repeatedly, jwhop, production and profits no longer bear much relation to the jobs picture. since those on the higher end of the scale are doing just fine thanks without workers.

posted November 07, 2011 08:24 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by katatonic:
you must be a very spiteful man to interpret everything anyone does as INTENDED to harm someone else. i don't suppose you eat fish then? since you are so blase about the extinction of various species?

do you not know that one of the prime ingredients in good fertilizer comes from fish?

you show no indication of understanding how the different elements of an environment feed off each other.

as a sidenote california has had plenty of water these three years (coincidental with this program as it happens) and production is just fine thanks.

as we have established repeatedly, jwhop, production and profits no longer bear much relation to the jobs picture. since those on the higher end of the scale are doing just fine thanks without workers.

i even heard that robot nurses are being considered in hospitals around the country. since those nurses are SO uppity and expect to be paid for the piddling little service they provide, dontcha know?

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I'm sorry Kat but you are way off here. Your bias towards jwhop is glaringly apparent in your lack of understanding concerning the issue between fish (that were not accurately counted) and the loss of goods and services experienced by the farmers in Central Cali. Because people are so uber sensitive to the environment the correct checks and balances were not made when the Enviro group made their claim. Due to the restrictions and the loss of farmland- people lost jobs, homes, farms and others were not able to benefit from the rewards of the produce hitting the shelf.

If a group such as Occupy "name your place here" wants to complain about something, how about less than honest groups that target hard working people that are just trying to put food on their table as well as the tables of others?

posted November 07, 2011 08:43 PM            

i find it ridiculous that because someone is trying to create one result, they are characterized as "wanting to do the other down". if it was poorly done, and i know there are plenty who think so, it was not necessarily out of political malice.

but it is still true that jobs, foreclosures, etc, are not necessarily the results of this measure. farmers, like everyone else, deal with a multitude of factors that all add into the situation. and they are also caught in the credit net.