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Ed Morrissey discussed, this morning, the parts of California that are being hurt by Fish & Wildlife's misguided water policies in Central California. These are aimed at preserving a tiny, inedible fish--the Delta Smelt--that some environmentalists claim is threatened with extinction.
Three years ago, a Federal judge authorized restrictions in the water taken from the Delta. Instead of restricting it, however, F&W largely shut it off, an action that--along with a multiyear draught in the West--virtually destroyed huge swaths of Central Valley farmland.
Unemployment is high all over the state, but in the Central Valley it's staggering. Ed explains:
A court order cut off water deliveries for seven months out of the year to the Central Valley at the same time a drought hit, and the combination turned a once-fertile breadbasket to the world into a Dust Bowl — or as Investors Business Daily suggests, a government-initiated agricultural disaster on the same order as Zimbabwe today or Ukraine in the 1930s. Monica Showalter reports that the region that once fed the world now faces widespread hunger as a result:
"Local newspapers and Fresno County officials are trying to rally Facebook users to vote for Fresno in a corporate contest sponsored by Wal-Mart for $1 million in charity food donations for the hungry. Fresno, a city of 505,000, has taken the national lead because 24.1% of Fresno’s families are going hungry.
Civic spirit is good, but something big is wrong here. Fresno is the agricultural capital of America. More food per acre in more variety can be grown in the fertile Central Valley surrounding this community than on any other land in America — perhaps in the world."
(My emphasis.) Ed goes on to explain the larger ramifications: an industry that is supposed to undergird the Golden State's economy has had the rug pulled out from under it over the past three years, turning the Central Valley into a charity case--and the missing revenue from prime agricultural land is hastening California's march to the poorhouse.
But it hurts all of us, too: Many Americans--many people all over the world, in fact--had been getting food from California's rich, sunshine-drenched soil before this, ahem, man-made disaster came along. And now food prices are rising because the needs of a bait fish have been placed above those of human beings. Our inability to export the food can't be doing good things for the country's trade balance, either.
Victor Davis Hanson, by the way, described the economic desperation and lawlessness that have taken hold in the new wastelands of the West in his recent article Two Californias.
A few weeks ago the same judge that had ordered restrictions on water pumping from the Delta ruled that the matter had been handled in a way that ignored science and human needs. And yet, other than a proposal to build a water tunnel for billions of dollars over the next decade--and bypass the Delta entirely--there seems to be no plan for actual relief. We'll know more when the next hearing takes place, this coming Tuesday.
