Today's Wall Street Journal posted an article on what has happened in California because the Environmental Protection Agency has cut off the water supply to the San Joaquin Valley. The area is suffering from a drought made worse by a cut off of the water supply because of possible danger to the delta smelt. According to the article:
"The state's water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a "biological opinion" imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched. ""
This is another in a long list of examples of what happens when you give the government control over things they know nothing about. It's called the Law of Unintended Consequences. The farm communities in the areas affected have been decimated. The unemployment rate in some farming towns like Mendota is near 40%.
The article concludes:
"Things in California may have to get so bad that they endanger Democratic Congressional incumbents before Washington wakes up, but it doesn't have to be that way. Mr. Salazar has said that convening the God Squad would be "admitting failure" in the effort to save the smelt under the Endangered Species Act. Maybe so, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of humans are also at stake. If the Obama Administration wants to help, it can take up Governor Schwarzenegger's request that it revisit the two biological opinions that are hanging farmers and farm workers out to dry."
My conclusion comes in the form of a few questions. Is a dustbowl where farmland used to be in any way an environmental asset? Was the impact of this action taken in consideration before the water stopped flowing? Is providing food and jobs for people more important than protecting a species which may or may not be endangered?
Leave a comment