They're Right About the Policy... but I find their Tactics SO Offensive

THE FAKE, PHONY, DISINGENUOUS FRAUDS AT THE WSJ

*  *  *

El Niño has doused northern California, but farmers in the state’s Central Valley won’t see much benefit.

* NOR WILL CONSUMERS!

The Obama Administration is again indulging its progressive friends at the expense of low-income communities.

* AND HIGH-INCOME...! AND MIDDLE-INCOME...!!!

(*SNORT*)

* JUST BECAUSE I CAN "AFFORD" $7.99/lb. FOR NUTS DOESN'T MEAN I WANT TO BE PAYING $7.99/lb. FOR NUTS!

The Bureau of Reclamation recently announced that Central Valley Project agricultural water contractors south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta would receive a mere 5% of their contractual allocation this year despite brimming reservoirs in the North. (Lake Shasta is at 90% capacity, and billions of gallons of water were released from Lake Folsom this winter to avert flooding.)

Meantime, wildlife refuges and farmers north of the Delta — those in Democratic Reps. Jerry McNerney and John Garamendi’s districts — will get 100% of the water they’re owed.

(*SMIRK*)

The liberal gentry in the Bay Area, which pipes its pristine water directly from Hetch Hetchy reservoir, also won’t be affected by this government water rationing.

(*BLOOD PRESSURE RISING*)

Federal biological opinions limit Delta water pumps to a third of capacity to protect endangered smelt and salmon, which can get sucked into the machines. Despite these restrictions, fish populations continue to decline.

The Fish and Wildlife Service acknowledged last year that “existing regulatory mechanisms have not proven adequate” to halt the smelt’s decline and that “we are unable to determine with certainty which threats or combinations of threats are directly responsible.”

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The bigger culprits appear to be invasive species, Delta farm fertilizer, Sacramento effluence, the drought and, perhaps, natural selection.

The Obama Administration is nonetheless doubling down on a failed policy.

* YEP! THAT'S WHAT THEY TEND TO DO!

Amid this winter’s storms, Delta water regulators reduced water pumping to "protect" putatively vulnerable larval and juvenile smelt. Three adult smelt — and no juveniles or larvae — have been killed by the pumps this year.

This environmental injustice has piqued Senator Dianne Feinstein, who on March 11 demanded that federal agencies base “pumping decisions on better science.”

(*SNORT*)

“In some instances these decisions were made even though available data suggested no smelt or salmon were anywhere near the pumps” while “in other cases, adult smelt were spotted as far as 17 miles from pumps, which led to reduced pumping levels,” she noted. “There are real-world consequences to the decisions” such as a melon farmer and his father who lost their farms, which employed 450 workers.

* YEAH... TALK... MAKE SPEECHES... BUT MEANWHILE HER PARTY CONTINUES TO DENY WATER TO OUR CALIFORNIA'S FARMERS!

Ms. Feinstein’s pleas were ignored.

* FOLKS... BOTTOM LINE... WE'RE TALKING CROCODILE TEARS. I VERY MUCH DOUBT FEINSTEIN IS TRULY INTERESTED IN GETTING THE WATER FLOWING. SHE'S NO DOUBT SIMPLY MUGGING FOR THE CAMERAS.

On March 24 — two days after the White House hosted a “water summit” to discuss challenges “in predominantly poor, minority, or rural communities, where water inequality can go hand-in-hand with socioeconomic inequality” — the Democrat appealed to President Obama.

“It seems to me that the agencies operate the system in a manner that may be contrary to the available data,” Senator Feinstein wrote. “Between January 1 and March 6 last year, 1.5 million acre feet of water flowed through the Delta and 745,000 acre feet were pumped out. During the same period this year, 5.5 million acre feet of water flowed through the Delta, but only 852,000 acre feet were pumped out.”

The San Luis and Delta-Mendota Water Authority says 700,000 acre-feet of water — enough to irrigate about 200,000 acres of land and sustain 700,000 families for a year — were lost between Dec. 1 and March 22 due to pumping restrictions. On March 25 regulators announced they would reduce pumping even more to protect smelt larvae. Forget you, Feinstein.

(*SMIRK*)

As she noted, restoring depleted groundwater reserves during wet years is essential to prevent aquifers, land and infrastructure from collapsing. It’s also needed to sustain farms. During the drought, farmers have had to drill deeper wells or buy water at a premium from those with senior water rights. The alternative is to leave land fallow — some 500,000 acres last year.

This government-made water shortage has had a trickle-down effect on the Central Valley, where unemployment is in the double digits and nearly a quarter of residents live in poverty. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Madera and Merced economies shrunk by 1% in 2014 while San Jose’s GDP grew 6.7% and San Francisco’s 5.2%.

House Republicans and Senator Feinstein have backed legislation to give federal agencies discretion to increase pumping during heavy storm flows. Ms. Feinstein last month told the Sacramento Bee that Mr. Obama hasn’t engaged. The unavoidable conclusion is that the President and his green patrons care more about protecting fish larvae than the poor.

* GOTTA LUV (AND BY "LUV" I MEAN H*A*T*E) THE WAY THESE SCUMBAGS AT THE WSJ USE THE SAME TACTICS AS THE LEFT. IT'S ALL ABOUT "THE POOR," HUH? WELL... NO... IT'S NOT! IT'S ABOUT THE MIDDLE CLASS! IT'S ABOUT FARMERS IN CALIFORNIA AND CONSUMERS THROUGHOUT THE NATION AND THE WORLD PAYING MORE - FAR MORE - AS THE "COST" OF THIS INSANITY THAN "THE ENVIRONMENT" GAINS!

* AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HOW THEY HOLD UP THAT LEFTIST LUNATIC FEINSTEIN AS A PARAGON OF VIRTUE ON THIS!