We Thought We Smelt A Story Here
Before we get to the point, let’s have a bit of fun, courtesy of political cartoonist Jack Ohman:
Funny stuff – that flag in the last frame with the smelt replacing the grizzly says it all. If there is one creature that has dominated California over the last decade, it is indeed the delta smelt, a critter that’s seemingly much less ferocious than our state flag’s bear. But this finger-long bait fish was seized on by environmental groups as the best tool for restricting water shipments from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to urban and farm water users from Alameda County in the Bay Area to Southern California.
Endangered Species Act litigation centered on the delta smelt has succeeded in slowing the pumps that feed the State Water Project, dramatically cutting the amount of water flowing the farms of the San Joaquin Valley (also known as “America’s Breadbasket”) and to 25 million Californians – that’s seven out of ten of us!
How drastically have deliveries been cut? Well, in one seven-day period in 2010, 29 billion gallons of water that previously would have been pumped from the Delta stayed in the Delta. That’s enough water to serve 700,000 people for a year.
A Big Reason to Support Cadiz
Even if the continuing legal battles over the smelt and other Delta fish are resolved, everyone recognizes that the high water mark of water deliveries from the Delta is behind us. We will need to conserve more and find new supplies, like recycling, re-using stormwater, desalinating ocean water – and bringing water to Southern California from the Cadiz aquifer.
Another 50,000 acre feet annually of precious water supplied by Cadiz will make all of us who rely to some extent of Delta water to breathe easier.
Maybe we can get that group the lobbyists in Ohman’s cartoon who formed Californians for Cute Fish to put up billboards saying “Cadiz Water – Good for California. Good for America.”
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