Salmon collapse as Delta water exports top record

From Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org:

John Beuttler, conservation director of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance, in his latest advisory emphasizes the catastrophic nature of the sudden and unprecedented crash of Central Valley fall run chinook salmon to the California environment and economy.

Could it be that this salmon collapse, along with the crash of delta smelt, longfin smelt, juvenile striped bass, and threadfin shad, has been engineered by the Bush and Schwazenegger administrations to destroy what is left of the commercial and recreational sport fishing industry? By removing the commercial and recreational anglers from the water, the Bush and Schwarzenegger administrations will effectively remove the strongest opponents of their environmentally destructive water policies.

The state and federal governments exported 7,000,000 acre feet of water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta in 2007, a record year for water exports. So whatever garbage you have heard in the media about “poor farmers” suffering from mythical “water cuts,” subsidized agribusiness in the San Joaquin Valley and southern California received record water shipments in 2007.

“The Department of Water Resources and federal Bureau of Reclamation cannibalized the storage in our northern California reservoirs to provide the largest amount of water exported from the Delta in California history last year,” said Bill Jennings, chairman of the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

With the opposition to their water policies removed or seriously weakened, subsidized agribusiness and greedy developers will see their ultimate dream fulfilled: the construction of the peripheral canal, the building of more dams and the destruction of the Bay-Delta Estuary as an ecosystem. The Delta then will be maintained by the state and federal governments as just a water supply for the corporate water barons and southern California, with no pesky delta smelt, chinook salmon, striped bass or fishermen in their way.

Click here to read the rest of this article from Dan Bacher at IndyBay.org.

Comments

Admin

• Log in

Credits

Powered by Vertigo & WordPress
WordPress Themes by Brian Gardner