Water supply cuts and failed environmental policies

As unemployment lines grow longer and rural communities suffer under the economic hardships of the regulatory drought, we can feel better knowing that today’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion includes whales among the species protected by reduced Central Valley water deliveries.

That’s right, I said whales.

The 844-page Biological Opinion on the Long Term Operation of the federal Central Valley Project and State Water Project claims that Central California salmon are the food supply for federally-listed “Southern Resident killer whales,” and therefore, the whales are in jeopardy because of low salmon stocks.

But what is causing the salmon to decline? A mountain of data going back 30 years or more shows that operation of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project pumping plants could be responsible for about five percent of the impact on the affected species. Other factors include striped bass predation, overfishing by commercial fishermen, upstream water quality, invasive species, ocean conditions and even the Clean Water Act. Studies of “adult equivalent” impacts show fishermen have almost 10 times the impacts on salmon as the projects.

None of these factors were addressed in the Opinion and the focus has remained where it has for years without any recordable improvements in the health of the Delta. The result is an enormous hardship on working families who depend on farm water for their livelihoods and a crashing ecosystem that is failing because of misguided policies. In today’s economic times taxpayers should be demanding results, not a rehash of the failed environmental policies of yesteryear.