Absurd Suit Alleges California Water Restrictions Hurt Fish
|
1.28 gallons to flush a toilet; and 34 gallons to produce an ounce of marijuana. But how many gallons are needed to save a three-inch delta smelt, the cause célèbre of environmentalists and bête noire of parched farmers? To protect smelt from water pumps, government regulators have flushed 1.4 trillion gallons of water into the San Francisco Bay since 2008. That would have been enough to sustain 6.4 million Californians for six years. WSJ Editorial |
A group of environmentalists has sued California and federal officials, claiming the governmental bodies are harming fish and wildlife in their efforts to deliver more water to farms and cities, the Sacramento Bee reported recently.
The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance is leading the group, which argues in the suit that agencies have redirected water to human needs at the expense of Chinook salmon, Delta smelt and other endangered species.
The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, came less than a week after the State Resources Water Control Board issued an order temporarily curbing the flow of water from Lake Shasta to farms and cities.
The board decided it needed to keep more water in Shasta to cool the reservoir’s temperature and thereby protect the winter-run Chinook salmon, whose population needs cool water to survive.
The suit says that while some fish species are “on the lip of extinction,” agriculture has proved resilient despite cutbacks in water. It noted that crop revenue and farm employment have stayed high during the drought. “Central Valley agriculture has not experienced impacts comparable to the precipitous declines suffered by the Delta smelt,” the suit says. Seriously? S