Government puts fish above farmers

Finally acknowledging that there is a significant government-created crisis in the San Joaquin Valley, the Interior Department convened a public hearing Sept. 30, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein has announced she has asked her staff to begin assembling a major piece of legislation to address the water crisis facing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has issued a "memorandum of understanding" that will keep representatives from six federal agencies talking to various interest groups in California. The problem is that it will take months to make such decisions and years for results to be apparent. The crisis is immediate for San Joaquin Valley farmers in the agricultural breadbasket for California and much of the nation. While the search for long-range solutions is worthy, in the short run the best and highest-impact option is to reverse a questionable decision to cut off irrigation water to Central Valley farmers...read more