FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:Friday, February 21, 2014
Contact: Steve Hopcraft 916/457-5546; steve@hopcraft.com; Twitter: @shopcraft; @MrSandHillCrane; Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla 209/479-2053 barbara@restorethedelta.org; Twitter: @RestoretheDelta
In case you missed it…
The Los Angeles Times Capitol Journal
Even when there’s not a drought, there isn’t enough to go around. And the collapse of a great estuary will endanger far more than the smelt.
George Skelton
4:42pm PST, February 19, 2014
SACRAMENTO—Don’t blame the little fish. And don’t call it the Central Valley.
Both comments, repeated incessantly, were irritants during President Obama’s visit to parched California farm country last week.
The president was there—in the San Joaquin Valley—to cuddle with water hogs.
The hogs are large growers who use lots of water, have just about run out and are angry because they’re being denied other people’s. And they keep complaining that the government is favoring a little “bait fish” over farmers.
Yes, regulators have been holding back some delta water in recent years to save the smelt, a finger-sized fish that is used not as bait but as a canary.
That is, the smelt is viewed by biologists as a canary in a coal mine, an indicator of ill health for the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, a source of drinking water for 24 million people and irrigation for 3 million acres. …
To read the full article, click here: http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-cap-drought-20140220,0,5700250.column?track=rss#axzz2toTPeHYj