Emptying Reservoirs in the Middle of a Drought

ANYONE DOUBTING THAT OUR nation's environmental and economic policies can get seriously out of whack from time to time need only look to the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Located in California's Central Valley, between the state's capital city and Stockton, it is where the American, Mokelumne, Cosumnes, and Calaveras Rivers flow into the larger Sacramento and San Joaquin. It is also where the saddest agricultural saga since the Depression-era Dust Bowl is now playing, as the waters from those rivers flow beneath San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and out to sea. As they flow unimpeded to the Pacific, those waters are also washing out to sea the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farm workers and agricultural business owners. It is an economic as well as human tragedy. This is a story about water, about its lack as well as its abundance. But it is also a story about the price we pay to protect the environment, and whether we are striking the right balance between nature and mankind. In the end, the question is whether people should exercise dominion over nature, or whether nature should lord over man. To most Americans, the answer is obvious: our capacity to make nature subservient to our needs justifies doing so, insomuch as we act as responsible stewards of the environment. But however obvious that might be to most people, the countervailing idea—that nature should take precedence over mankind—is being sown into a series of laws and regulations that are causing undue torment and distress. The American West was created, it is fair to say, by mankind taming nature and using it for his own purpose. That is how the San Joaquin Valley over time became the most productive agricultural region in the world...AmericanSpectator