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Pacific Legal Foundation statement on Central Valley water shortage: Feds are illegally putting fish before people

Posted by: Maven on April 17, 2009 at 8:36 am

From the Pacific Legal Foundation, this press release:

With thousands of farmworkers, farmers, and other Central Valley residents due to rally on Friday, April 16, at the San Luis Reservoir to protest drastic cutbacks on water delivery to farms and the broader community, Pacific Legal Foundation released this statement on the water shortage:

“A big cause of the devastating water shortage is a federally ordered reduction in water pumping in a misguided effort to help the delta smelt,” said PLF attorney Damien Schiff. “In other words, to a large extent, the water shortage shows big government at its most destructive.”

“The drastic cut in water pumping amounts to regulatory overkill,” said Schiff. “It is wrong environmentally, wrong economically, wrong morally, and wrong legally.”

“To begin with, the Endangered Species Act requires scientific justification before severe regulatory restrictions can be imposed,” Schiff continued. “But federal regulators haven’t offered scientific proof that smelt will benefit from drastic cuts in water pumping. To the contrary, there’s good scientific reason to believe that the pumping reductions won’t help the smelt – in other words, the feds are creating a regulatory drought, destroying jobs, and undermining the economy, without any clear sign that smelt will even benefit.”

“Second, judicial precedent requires that regulators balance the interests of species with the interest of human beings, jobs, and the economy,” said Schiff. “The federal regulators who have helped create a water shortage in the Central Valley have ignored their legal duty to take the interests of human beings into account. They’re favoring fish at the expense of families and the jobs and well-being of hundreds of thousands of Californians and millions of American consumers. And by wreaking destruction on the Central Valley farming, they’re threatening to create agricultural shortages and higher prices nationwide, because the Central Valley is one of America’s leading food baskets and a source of national food security.”

“As the nation’s legal watchdog for limited government and a balanced approach to environmental regulations, Pacific Legal Foundation has been contacted by many victims of the water shortages that have been caused by the federal government’s destructive and illegal pumping cutbacks,” said Schiff. “We are in discussion about a possible legal challenge to the government’s outrageous insistence that fish must come before people, jobs, and the economy.”

About Pacific Legal Foundation
Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) is the oldest and most successful public interest legal organization that litigates for limited government, property rights and a balanced approach to environmental regulations, in courts nationwide.

More commentary Salazar, the ESA, and the water shortage from the Pacific Legal Foundation blog by clicking here.

April 17, 2009 · Filed Under Drought, Weather & Snowpack

Comments

One Response to “Pacific Legal Foundation statement on Central Valley water shortage: Feds are illegally putting fish before people”

  1. dfb on April 18th, 2009 1:48 am

    I bet he thinks Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153 (1978) will be weakened by the current court. It all depends on Justice Kennedy who I think will say this is a political issue and that Congress created the God Squad for just this type of situation.

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