An environmental battle is under way today in California between the farmers
of the San Joaquin Valley and Delta areas and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service. The issue at hand is the possibility of a future major drought in
the area and the effect such a drought would have on the survival of an
endangered species known as the Delta Smelt, a three and one-half inch
minnow.
Pacific Legal Foundation's "Save Our Water, Save Our Jobs" petition campaign
has been joined by California key civic, business and agricultural leaders.
The petition campaign has gathered 12,000 signatures to date, urging
President Barack Obama and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to
convene a special panel called the "God Squad" to address California's water
emergency caused by harsh federal environmental restrictions. The "God
Squad" is a panel of seven cabinet officials acting as a committee to
intercede in economic emergencies.
California Governor Schwarzenegger refuses to invoke the "God Squad"
provision, giving the reason that in the five times it has been attempted,
it failed in four. Appeals to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
brought the same result - a refusal.
The San Joaquin farmers find themselves in a political stalemate.
Environmentalists represented by the Fish and Wildlife Commission are
holding fast for the most part, though in the past month substantial relief
was granted when some 600,000 acre-feet of water were released to the most
needy farmers in the region.
The San Joaquin River is not a strong river. It has been known to go dry at
times, partly as a result of a dam built on the river in 1949.
San Joaquin farmers might be well advised to take a page from the Klamath
River Basin Farmers to the north. Farmers along the southern
Oregon-northern California border in the Klamath River Valley faced a
similar problem when irrigation to the farms in the region was shut down
eight years ago in 2001 on orders from Secretary of the Interior Gale
Norton.
Environmentalists had petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to deny
irrigation water to the farmers in the Klamath River Basin in order to
protect an endangered species of fish known as the Lost River or Short Nose
(snubnose) sucker.
The Klamath River, approximately 263 miles long, is a major river along the
southern Oregon and California border considered prime habitat for Chinook
salmon, Coho salmon and Steelhead trout, none of which is an endangered
species.
When the use of water in the Upper Klamath Basin for irrigated agriculture
was temporarily cut off in 2001, hundreds of thousands of acres in the
Klamath Valley went without irrigation that summer. A wave of civil
disobedience swept the valley as hundreds of local farmers using saws and
blow torches seized the head gates of the Klamath Lake to feed water into
irrigation canals on three occasions in June and July. Bureau of
Reclamation officials closed them again, then turned to federal marshals and
the FBI to help them keep the gates closed after the local sheriff refused
to intervene. As tensions grew in Klamath Valley, Secretary Gale Norton
finally ordered the gates to open permanently in 2002.
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 expired in 1990 but funding has been
continued by Congressional environmentalist bureaucrats far beyond what the
sponsors of the original act ever intended. The original intent of the law
was to protect the American bald eagle, the grizzly bear and bison, true
icons in the natural animal world in America. It was never intended to
include insects, rodents and reptiles that have appeared on the list of
endangered species by the hundreds.
The reach of the Endangered Species Act today has been extended into areas
of private property rights that are proving disastrous in their application
to local citizens.
For example, the Atlanta, Georgia, region in 2007 was suffering a similar
problem - one of the worst droughts in its history. Over 3 million people
in the Atlanta area depend on the 38,000-acre Lake Lanier for their water.
Lake Lanier was then estimated to have less than a 90-day supply of water,
controlled by the U.S. Corps of Engineers at a normal water flow of some
5,000 cubic feet per second (CFS). Atlanta pleaded with the Corps of
Engineers to reduce the flow somewhat to protect its water supply. After
passing numerous communities and two power plants, all of which require
necessary amounts of water, the flow reaches the "three biggest road blocks
to dropping the rate of flow." Apparently taking precedence over all else,
the biggest roadblocks - not the humans in Atlanta - are the "Fat
three-ridge mussel, purple bank climber mussel and the Gulf sturgeon, a
fish." All three are "endangered species and carry a federal mandate that
the water release rate be maintained, otherwise the mussels will die."
There is something inherently wrong about placing the rights of rodents,
aquatic life and insects above the Constitutionally guaranteed right to life
and property of citizens of the United States.
E. Ralph Hostetter, a prominent businessman and publisher, also is an
award-winning columnist and Vice Chairman of the Free Congress Foundation
Board of Directors. He welcomes e-mail comments at
eralphhostetter@yahoo.com.
