Trying to ‘Stop the Bleeding’ from Environmental Overreach
Central California Republicans — and farmers across the state — won a small victory last night in a House committee in a battle that has seen scores of communities devastated by environmental regulatory overreach.
The Delta smelt is a tiny fish that lives is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley River Delta. In response to the fish’s threatened status, influenced by its sensitivity to environmental conditions and the large-scale pumping operations necessary to send water south, a 2007 court order citing the Endangered Species Act severely cut back water deliveries through the agricultural Central Valley.
Legislation, lawsuits and regulation whipped up a perfect storm to stop much of the water from reaching millions of Californians.
“So the people that had the water ended up losing the water thanks to government and government regulations,” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) told me Thursday, taking a break in his office after the mark-up of his bill, the San Joaquin Valley Water Reliability Act.
“And so what we’re doing, this bill, is we’re basically fixing that problem,” he said, by going back to the 1994 bipartisan Bay-Delta Accord. “We’re going back and we’re saying, let’s give the people back their state water rights.”
Nunes, a 38-year-old, five-term congressman, has long been pegged as an up-and-comer in the Republican Party. He already holds two choice committee seats, on Ways and Means and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. His office is tucked next to Speaker John Boehner’s on the first floor of the Longworth House office building.
The water crisis back home in his district has been a key priority for Nunes, who saw the region’s problems only multiply under Nancy Pelosi’s House.
“They actually passed a couple pieces of legislation that made it much worse,” he said. “They took a quarter million acre feet away there, which devastated a lot of my district.”
That’s why, he said, the Valley’s crisis is called “the manmade drought or the Congress-created drought.”
“Because it was laws passed over time that were followed by lawsuits that took the water away,” Nunes said.
The result of this regulation and decreased water supplies has been crippling in a region where agriculture accounts for $26 billion in total sales and 38 percent of the area’s jobs. More than half of the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts hail from California.
Everything I know about California water politics – no small matter – I learned from the 1974 movie “Chinatown”. Who better to learn from than Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, and…oops.. Roman Polanski? Seriously though, water has been a constant problem in the Central Valley and SoCal for forever. It is a constant battle of competing interests and awfully difficult to say who is right and who is wrong.
This is completely different from past water conflicts. You need to drive through the Central Valley and look at the acres and acres of empty farmland that is going unused, and consider the loss of all the economic activity that is no longer happening, in order to understand the magnitude of the problem. This is not Northern California versus Southern California. This is the Democrats trying to depopulate one of the last remaining conservative areas of an increasingly left-leaning state.
Congressman Nunes should write a bill the will remove the Hetch-Hetchy damn, in Yosemite National Park. Then he stand back and watch Pelosi and Feinstein scream about water rights. The Hetch-Hetchy damn serves water to San Francisco. They have no problem screwing Central Valley and all other places that use this water, but take their water away and they will cry a river. My water rates have risen 28% in three years, and another 8% increase scheduled this year, with severe restrictions on the amount of water I can use. So here’s to Pelosi and Feinstein. http://www.hetchhetchy.org
Take out Comanche res as well. It supplies East Bay MUD. Figure out how to give farmers first priority over the cities, most of the water used by the cities goes for lawns and washing cars anyhow, so it’s wasted. Listen to the city folk scream bloody murder, and smile.
I live in the Central San Joaquin Valley. I live every day with double digit unemployment, empty strip malls, and college graduate grandchildren living with their parents because there’s no jobs. Jim Costa, Dennis Cardoza, Diane Feinstein and Nancy Palosi don’t deal with this every day like we do. None of this is God created, it is all Congress created. they all are very quick to stop our ability to make a living. But you are right…take away Hetch Hetchy and they would all scream as they blew away in dust. I am so tired of the coastal regions running our entire state!! I am so tired of standing in line in Walmart to pay for my purchases as a young unmarried mother pays for her things with an EBT card, while holding an IPhone and texting on it with $100 worth of fingernails. Yes, this happened today.
Thats not so bad – where I live she has all that and more – and can’t speak a lick of English.
We’re living in a government induced depression. Its the farmers, ranchers, miners, tree harvesters, oil men, truckers, etal are purposely being devasted amd driven to food stamp nation. Once we’re all broke, watch George Soros and his New World Order Types come in an buy everything up. Then they’ll turn on the water, mine, ship, etc.
This is a classic case, there are others, whose clear outcome reveals the failure of our regulatory system. There is no question that the Clean Water Act, authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to hold the power of life or death over the economy of a region. People who live in Manhattan high rises, and believe Central Park is the wilderness, have litigated entire industries out of existence. Now what?
California is called the golden state because all of its wild greenery is tan most of the year; it is semi arid in many areas. (And has one of the most complex micro environments on earth) Lacking man made irrigation, it reverts to dessert. With water, it can feed our nation.
Mankind no longer wears animal skins because he learned to exploit nature. Over time, he learned to control his exploitation so that his future was not destroyed. He conserved. This requires extremely difficult, and highly technical trade offs between two or more social goods, e.g a little fish vs. millions of acres of rich farm land. Yet today we have unelected, unresponsive, one dimensional people empowered to make them. There is no requirement, or personal risk to a bureaucrat who increases the cost of survival of another American. Indeed they are forbidden, and by culture, predisposed to ignore real costs.
It is fashionable today to apply “externality costs” to environmentally bad activities for the purpose of economically persecuting them out of existence. But the evaluation of these costs have no market basis. Would you pay $100 for a head of lettuce to save the endangered left handed minnow? It is certain that environmentalists would force this cost on others. Who decides?
IMHO, only an elected body can, if our democracy is to survive. Today we have a police state, enforcing industry killing regulations. They fill libraries and are simply Greek to outsiders. Entire industries have left our land due to regulatory costs.
This election has raised the issue of the abolition of some federal agencies, ie EPA. Is it better to end it, or mend it? If it to contribute, it must act under the discipline of the market place.
I keep wondering how this is Constitutional in any way. The government is supposed to “act for the general welfare.” By promoting a fish over the interests of the people, they are in clear violation of this clause.
I guess their oath to uphold and defend the law doesn’t mean what we think it means…
This is not about a bait fish. This is about total control over the masses. The elites (the politicians and their banking masters) will use FOOD and WATER as their biggest weapon against the population. This is what Obamacare is all about. Total control! The stupid liberals think its about social fairness. Obama and his masters are after complete control and a national healthcare plan will allow them to take control over this. In the end, a single payer system WILL be your only choice as the insurance companies become dust. Our food, water, vaccinations all will be under complete and total control of the elites.
Our grain reserves have been destroyed. Our farm land has been taken over by UNELECTED bureaucrats who have been placed by the elites to take control over the food chain. To make things even more concerning, you have fascist companies like Monsanto engineering food that DOES NOT produce seeds. This is to ensure that all food is controlled.
Day by Day we loose even more of our human rights. Fema camps being built all over the nation. Obama signing over our constitutional rights and we now can be detained without trail and representation if we are deemed a threat to their permanent power. We now have Homeland security branding everyday patriots (conservative Christians for the most part) as terrorist threats. Hell, Obama’s food Nazi’s are now confiscating kid’s lunches! WTF!!!!!!!!
Folks, thing do not look good at all! This is not about the dog and pony show between Republicans and Democrats; this is about dividing up the country. Who will be complaint and who will NOT! Those who control the money supply control the world! The end goal of all this is to CENTRALIZE all the power into the hands of the banker elites. The politicians are just their puppets!
I agree w/ Dan. These foolish demos consider the SJ Valley fly over area w/ hicks, Okies & illegal aliens populating the place. Hence,they laugh at us & could care less if farms go under & a little fish is considered more important than people. Frankly, our gov’t has utterly failed IMO. Tear it all down & start over because what we have now sure doesn’t work-especially in CA & DC!
Bulgaricus – excellent post. I especially enjoyed you reference to “Okies”. Being one, I certainly know how alee of we “fly over” Americans feel about the unelected but empowered bureaucrats who must be stopped in their tracks, and their so-called work undone.
Well, Ok Sam, my Mom was an Okie from Enid. Frankly, the way things are now in CA, OK is a far better place to live than in CA!