A couple of weeks ago CBS evening news reported that an estimated 1,700 farm jobs could be lost as more than 620 square miles of farmland will go unplanted. This didn't’ surprise me. When we drove I-5 this year much of the San Joaquin Valley looked more like desert than farm land. The U.S. Department of Agriculture expects produce prices to rise by up to 5 percent, adding $500 to the average American family’s grocery bill.
However, CBS’s report failed to mention that much of the economic consequences of the drought could have been avoided. In May 2007, a Federal District Court Judge ruled that increased amounts of water had to be re-allocated towards protecting the Delta smelt - a three-inch fish on the Endangered Species List.
Because of this ruling, in 2009 and 2010 more than 300 billion gallons (or 1 million acre-feet) of water were diverted away from farmers in the Central Valley and into the San Francisco Bay - eventually going out into the Pacific Ocean.
Rather than suspend this policy to protect an endangered three-inch Delta smelt, President Obama chose to continue the federal water policy of releasing water for smelt instead of using that water to irrigate croplands in California.
This country is blessed with some of the richest water resources in the world. The United States has 22,000 liters per capita per day, more than enough water for ten times the current population. For us, it is just a matter of getting the resources to where it is needed. The lack of long term vision to build water storage facilities and canals to transport water is nothing more than bad government.
All of this will play out in a future crisis for the climate control lobby who can’t wait, I’m sure, to claim higher food prices are the result of climate change. The green lobby has stopped any constructive projects that would collect and save water resources for decades, while advocating we must ration our existing resources with an ever growing population.
Droughts are never good, but the bright side of the California drought is it may finally drive some sense into our lawmakers, who hopefully are beginning to recognize the need for a more balanced ecology. One that is slightly tilted towards favoring human beings.
