California Gets a Trillion Gallons in Rainwater and Tosses it in the Ocean
Liberals have a tendency to do more harm than good, especially when it comes to micromanaging the environment. Every year, California sends full amounts of rainwater out into the ocean. A giant swath of what used to be called, “the breadbasket of the world” is a desert because Sacramento with the help of Washington refuses to divert water to the farmland.
Representative Devin Nunes, (CA) described the San Joaquin Valley situation in the WSJ back in 2009.
“Tens of thousands of people have been tossed out of work—the town of Mendota alone has an unemployment rate of about 40%—and the lines for food donations stretch down streets. The reason? There isn’t enough water to go around this year, and the Obama administration is drawing up new reasons to divert more of it from farms and people and into the San Francisco Bay. Today the San Joaquin Valley is being transformed into a dust bowl. Hundreds of thousands of acres are fallow, while almond and plum trees are being left to die in the scorching sun.”
But it has gotten worse. Just as California receives this deluge, State Water Resources Control Board wants to raise the amount that California throws away!
The LA Times reports:
The State Water Resources Control Board wants to raise the flow of the San Joaquin and the tributary Merced, Stanislaus and Tuolumne Rivers to 40 percent of their natural flow during the critical spring months.
But that target seems only to have angered both sides in the debate. Environmental groups say it’s too low; farmers and leaders in the valley say it would cripple their economies.“You are the grim reaper,” Assemblyman Adam Gray, whose district includes Merced, told members of the board at one of a series of public hearings in the San Joaquin Valley this month.
“Water is life in this region, and you appear to have no other purpose than to take that life away.”