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Commentary: Farm, fishing industries can’t remain foes in water debate

Posted by: Maven on October 5, 2009 at 7:19 am

From the Sacramento Bee, this commentary by Larry Collins, co-founder of Salmon Water Now and a California fisherman for more than 22 years, and president of the San Francisco Crab Boat Owners Association:

“The battle for California’s water took national stage recently as several senators and political pundits added their comments to a debate that has riveted this state for years. Yet with the new voices came the same old repetition: Someone else is responsible for our water crisis. The current blame game ensures the status quo survives. Progress requires a common ground.

There is no doubt that the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is in crisis. Years of less-than-average rainfall and decades of shortsighted overuse have turned rivers into puddles, streams into dry beds. Water supplies that have supported agriculture for decades have been cut, and the fragile ecosystem is collapsing.

As a result, the livelihoods of both inland farmers and coastal fishermen have been destroyed. Cries of a “dust bowl” are echoing through the Central Valley, and thousands of acres of once-fertile farmland have been left fallow for lack of water.

A few hundred miles away, commercial and sport fishing boats up and down the coast are being sold for scrap after the second consecutive year in which there have been no fish to fish. California has lost more than 20,000 fishing jobs and nearly $2 billion of annual revenue from the collapse of its fisheries and the industries they support. Now we import more than 80 percent of the seafood we eat from overseas.

As the weakened cornerstone of the nation’s food security, California farmers and fishermen are in the same boat, but the two groups are being pitted against each other in rhetoric used by politicians, activists and the media. …”

Read more fof this commentary by clicking here.

October 5, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack, Wildlife & Endangered Species

Comments

One Response to “Commentary: Farm, fishing industries can’t remain foes in water debate”

  1. Linda Morse-Robertson on October 5th, 2009 8:28 am

    What a great article, and I agree. WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR OUR WATER USAGE.

    Farmers need to conserve, clean and reuse their water as they do in Baja Sur. Residents need to conserve. Counties need to relax current regulations concerning reuse of grey water by citizens so that it is affordable for us to do so and not be in violation nor so expensive to put in a system that we cannot afford to do so.

    IF we all work together, since we cannot “manufacture” more water than Mother Nature gives us, I feel that there is enough for all. But no “group” is, nor can be, exempt from responsibility from pollution, over use, misuse, etc..the technology is out htere, from toilets that incinerate waste (versus the incredible amounts of water currently used) and on and on and on…we just have to have it affordable and enforceable.

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