You aren't allowed to guess when it comes to science

For years government agencies have said that export pumping is at fault for declining Delta fish populations, yet Judge Oliver Wanger’s ruling could not have been more clear; the government acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” and the pumping restrictions were “a product of guesstimations”. The agencies involved formulated actions that lack scientific justification and they failed to evaluate alternatives other than reduced pumping.

Those are strong words.

Judge Wanger also acknowledged that protections for fish are important. That’s something farmers have never debated. The answer, according to the judge and I agree, must be a balanced solution that doesn’t sacrifice the needs of people for the sake of fish, especially when bad science is used to justify regulatory actions.

Delta fish need water, but it has to be clean

All of the people who have been claiming for years that export pumping is the root cause for declining fish populations will have some new information to consider. According to University of Maryland researcher Dr. Patricia Glibert, upstream wastewater has changed the ratio of chemicals in the Delta, essentially killing off the base of the food chain that native fish depend on and making things easier for invasive species.

This is something we have suspected for years; thanks to previous work done by folks like BJ Miller who concluded that delta smelt were simply starving. Today’s study points to the smoking gun that supports the conclusions in Miller’s earlier work.

Californians should be furious over this because of the hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of gallons of water that have been thrown at the problem over the last 20 years to no avail. In the days to come expect environmental advocates to continue to demand that water supplies to south-of-delta users be reduced even further in this failed attempt to restore the ecosystem.


http://www.umces.edu/Glibert%20Reviews%20in%20Fisheries%20Science.pdf