Oh yes.
One of the worst droughts in California’s history has devastated more than a half-million acres of the most fertile farmland in America. In communities like Sacramento, “water police” go from door to door to enforce conservation measures. There’s even a mobile “app” to report neighbors to city authorities so they can be fined for wasting water.
With the Sierra snowpack at 4% of normal as of May 20, Californians will desperately need what little water remains behind its dams this summer. Authorities have warned some towns like Folsom—home of Folsom Lake—to expect daily rationing of 50 gallons per person, a 60% cut from average household usage.
Yet last month the Bureau of Reclamation drained Folsom and other reservoirs on the American and Stanislaus rivers of more than 70,000 acre feet of water—enough to meet the annual needs of a city of half a million people—for the comfort and convenience of fish.
Government officials who are entrusted with the careful management of our water squandered it in less than three weeks to nudge baby salmon toward the Pacific Ocean (to which they swim anyway) and to keep the river at just the right temperature for the fish by flushing the colder water stored in the reservoirs.
But of course!
This illustrates one of the problems with democracy.
Some people actually vote for being ruled.
As subjects.
Comments
6 responses to “Fish are more important than people!”
thats the law if you don’t like it change it that is what you keep telling the illegal alien children.
Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. California has too many people and not enough salmon.
They have the gov’t they want.
That it’s so entertaining, when watching from other states, is really just icing on the cake.
Now if we could only get the Californians who voted for this shit to stay in the midden they created instead of trying to expand it to all the other states they emigrate to in order to get away from the crap they created.
Take a look at the lawns in LA if you’re so worried about our water.
You’re right in pointing out the folly of California’s Department of Water Resources. If ever a state bureaucracy deserved to be shit canned, this one is it. However, there is more to the problem than fish.
Water has been over-committed. After the huge expansion of the State Water Project in the 1960’s, with the building of Oroville Dam on the Feather River, and other storage facilities, vast barren areas on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley were put into irrigation. In addition, a small river was sent south to the LA basin. With population increases in the last 50 years, no new storage facilities constructed, and three years of drought, there isn’t enough water for agriculture let alone urban use.
The releases for fish may be stupid, but without that excuse there still wouldn’t be enough water. Also, without those releases more salt water would infiltrate into the Delta. It’s already in water as far north as Colusa which is 100 miles inland from San Francisco Bay and 50 miles north of Sacramento. Moonbeam Brown’s plan to build tunnels and canals skirting the Delta in order to deliver more water south will only compound salt water intrusion, especially since environmentalists will delay and/or stop construction of additional reservoirs.