How Ya Like Them Shriveled-Up Avocados?
Some of the most productive farmland in the world is going fallow thanks to a man-made water shortage, thanks to environmentalists, contends a farmer and his congressman. Allysia Finley reports on the drought condition and the battle over the land in the WSJ:
About 400,000 acre-feet of water over the past two years have been diverted from farm use merely to conduct salmon test-runs on the dry river. Such prodigious use of water for seemingly everything but farming is starting to seem familiar to growers. For the past seven years, federal regulators have been flushing hundreds of thousands of acre-feet of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the San Francisco Bay on the pretext of protecting three-inch smelt from pumps that send water to farmers in the Central Valley.It's ironic, Mr. Watte says, that the biggest threat to the smelt is "Sacramento and other communities that are pumping their sewage into the delta--or not treating it the way they should be." Another irony: Government biologists kill more smelt each year conducting population surveys than do the delta's water pumps. Meanwhile, Mr. Watte notes, San Francisco is piping in "pristine water from Yosemite"--thereby circumventing the delta--while liberals demand that more water be diverted from farmers to restore the smelt's polluted ecosystem.
"Diverted from farm use". Uh huh, right...
We're talking here about land that, by all rights, is pretty darned dry - and farmers who are accustomed to getting water at ridiculously subsidized prices. Note this bit from the article:
"West-side growers...plan to leave fallow half a million more acres, a drastic move spurred by a depletion of aquifers and suspension of state water deliveries."
In other words, they've drained their own water supplies- and now they want the government to help them out by taking water from elsewhere. Maybe they shouldn't be growing water-intensive crops on arid land?
a_random_guy at March 10, 2014 3:14 AM
"Maybe they shouldn't be growing water-intensive crops on arid land?"
Continue this logic, and pretty soon you'll notice that Californians probably shouldn't be living on arid land.
Gotta have the SoCal view, though. Water wars, hello!
Radwaste at March 10, 2014 6:03 AM
Yeah, this article reads like a silly distraction, given how much outside water is used by agriculture in CA. (I think it used to be 90% of the water use and is now something like 50%.)
Astra at March 10, 2014 6:48 AM
Yeah, this article reads like a silly distraction, given how much outside water is used by agriculture in CA. (I think it used to be 90% of the water use and is now something like 50%.)
Posted by: Astra at March 10, 2014 6:48 AM
Of course, filling the swimming pools, and flushing the toilets in LA is so much more important than sustaining agriculture.
Isab at March 10, 2014 7:44 AM
The salmon are screwed, and so are the avocados.
Because there are TOO MANY PEOPLE in California!
Save the salmon! Save the avocados! Does it make sense for us to run around trying to save those things when WE are the problem?
If you really want to do something constructive about the water supply, put birth control in it.
Pirate Jo at March 10, 2014 1:45 PM
The salmon are screwed, and so are the avocados.
Because there are TOO MANY PEOPLE in California!
Save the salmon! Save the avocados! Does it make sense for us to run around trying to save those things when WE are the problem?
If you really want to do something constructive about the water supply, put birth control in it.
Posted by: Pirate Jo at March 10, 2014 1:45 PM
Well yea, because do you think anyone other than "people" gives a flying fuck about either the salmon or the avocados?
Isab at March 10, 2014 5:58 PM
"Continue this logic, and pretty soon you'll notice that Californians probably shouldn't be living on arid land."
Yes. Not that there shouldn't be anyone there, but the population is far too high. I'd welcome a few hundred thousand of them to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which has clean air and a considerable excess of fresh water, except for how they'd vote.
markm at March 11, 2014 5:56 AM
Water rationing and forced cutoffs make the news, but NObody will talk about setting a population cap.
jefe at March 15, 2014 4:44 PM
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