Jean P. Sagouspe commentary: New water proposal for longfin smelt makes no sense at all

From the Fresno Bee, this commentary by Jean P. Sagouspe, a farmer on the westside of the San Joaquin Valley and the president of Westlands Water District:

The state Department of Fish and Game is proposing a new set of regulations to protect the longfin smelt. If fully implemented, the Department of Water Resources estimates that the proposed regulations could cut off as much as 1 million acre-feet of water deliveries to the two-thirds of California that depends on water pumped through the Delta.

That’s on top of the 760,000 acre feet we have already lost because of court-ordered restrictions on pumping intended to benefit another species of smelt. And it comes in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history.

The restrictions probably won’t do any good, because the longfin rarely go anywhere near the pumps. But the department proposes no action at all to protect the longfin from ammonia pollution and the extensive list of other stressors that are impacting the fish.

The good news is that even if the new regulations are adopted by the Fish and Game Commission at its meeting Nov. 14, they may never trigger any cutbacks in actual water deliveries, because they address a problem that will probably never arise. So long as the longfin don’t move close to the pumps, presumably no additional reductions in pumping will be ordered.

The bad news is that this proposal is being raised at all. It points up some serious deficiencies in the way the state is approaching our water crisis.

Read more of this commentary in the Fresno Bee by clicking here.

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