Free Republic

The liberals who run California have long purported that their green policies are a free (organic) lunch, but the bills are coming due. Lo, Governor Jerry Brown has mandated a 25% statewide reduction in water use. Consider this rationing a surcharge for decades of environmental excess.

What they’re saying • “The law prohibits us from making such fine utilitarian calculations to balance the smelt’s interests against the interests of the citizens of California. — Federal Judge Jay Bybee • “These regulations have harmed farmers and farmworkers in the Central Valley ... by diverting vast quantities of water away from human use and out to the Pacific Ocean, all to try to improve the habitat of ... a 3-inch fish on the Endangered Species Act list. — James S. Burling, director of litigation for the Pacific Legal Foundation The Supreme Court on Monday steered clear of a...

As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmentalists. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement with the environmental groups to add thousands of acres near their projects for wildlife protection. As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmental groups. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement on Tuesday with the Sierra Club and others to add thousands of acres near their proposed projects for wildlife protection. The agreement...

There are many reasons that Barack Obama’s presidency has proven so ineffectual even by its own standards — boosting economic growth, improving health care, preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, enhancing America’s world reputation. One reason is that Barack Obama is the most ideologically rigid president in American history. He believes in all the wrong ideas, and holds to them with mulish tenacity. But there’s a second reason that was on vivid display in the past few days — overweening arrogance. This president has no patience with attempting to solve the actual problems that afflict the people he...

WASHINGTON — Federal protections for California's delta smelt will remain intact, but Western water controversies will keep on boiling, with a Supreme Court decision Monday not to hear farmers' ambitious challenge to a key environmental law. The court's decision, issued without comment, effectively upholds the conclusion by a Fresno, Calif.-based trial judge and a lower appellate court that the Endangered Species Act can protect even those plants and animals that don't cross state borders.

An Interior Department official said Thursday the agency will ask independent experts to review allegations by a federal judge that the testimony of two department scientists was so inconsistent and contradictory it amounted to deliberate deception. U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger attacked the credibility of the biologists last month shortly before retiring from the bench. At a hearing on a motion in a court case involving delta smelt protections, Wanger called one of the scientists a "zealot" and accused the agency of engaging in "bad faith."

With a House Republican loading political ammunition in a national fight over government science, Interior Department officials said Friday they would stand by the work of two scientists whose integrity was attacked recently by a federal judge overseeing the Delta water wars. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, in a lengthy and strongly worded assault Sept. 16, said the two scientists deliberately misled him when they urged him not to weaken new rules meant to help imperiled Delta smelt in wet years like this one. He called one scientist, Jennifer Norris of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a "zealot" who...

LEMOORE, Calif. — In what often sounded like a stump speech, Sarah Palin tailored a searing critique of big government to an audience in California’s Central Valley on Sunday, telling supporters the region’s woes could be blamed on politicians picking "a 3-inch fish" over jobs. The 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, speaking at a community college arena here, was referring to the delta smelt, a dwindling local species, protections for which have cut water shipments to the region and turned fertile land fallow. "This faceless government takes away their lifeline, which is water, and they did it, they turned off...

The Commerce Clause that regulates interstate commerce is at issue in the legal battle of Obamacare. Can the federal government tell individuals that they must buy insurance? Not as well known is how the same commerce clause is destroying farms and raising food prices by stopping the flow of water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers to the Central Valley in California. The feds at the urging of the state government has literally turned off the tap, destroying prime farmland in order to benefit the sex lives of the Delta Smelt.

A federal judge Tuesday threw out much-disputed delta smelt protections that have cut water shipments to Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley, finding that federal biologists failed to justify aspects of the restrictions. But the ruling in a long-running legal battle was not a clear-cut victory for water contractors, who lost some of their fundamental arguments against the pumping reductions. The decision by U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger means that the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service will for the second time have to rewrite the endangered species document that regulates operation of the huge state and federal pumps that...

The same federal judge who helped set in motion protests in California's farm country when he ruled three years ago that Delta pumping limits were too lax to prevent fish from going extinct determined Tuesday the new regulations go too far the other way. In a sharply worded, 255-page decision, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger, of Fresno, concluded: "The public cannot afford sloppy science and uni-directional prescriptions that ignore California's water needs." He ordered regulators to rewrite significant portions of a permit for massive Delta pumps that deliver water to the Bay Area, San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. The...

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Monday set up a new task force to wrangle California water decisions, with long-term hopes of consolidating protections for smelt and salmon. The new task force eventually envisions one unified environmental management plan assisting the fish species dependent upon the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Guided by an Interior Department veteran with considerable California experience, the task force has shorter-term goals, as well. "(This will) ensure that we are coordinating to use state-of-the-art science and to find the best alternatives to protect both endangered fish and water supplies," Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a statement....

For those who don't remember, this link will give you some background into what california has had to deal with. My idea is this: California's farmers were hit very hard when the water got shut off, why not have their stories be heard on the EIB network? I certainly don't remember any progressive journalist rushing out there to have their story reported on.

Politics: The water spigots are back on, at least temporarily, in California's Central Valley. Turned off to protect a tiny fish, they happen to be in the districts of two congressmen "undecided" on health care reform. One could chalk it up to good fortune or just good constituent service. But in the middle of a contentious health care debate marked by Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases, we may be forgiven if we find an announcement by the Department of the Interior regarding California's water supply a tad too coincidental. On Tuesday, the Department of the Interior announced it was increasing...

This winter, on certain days, it would take only two small fish known as delta smelt to show up at California's two largest water projects to trigger pumping restrictions causing the loss of hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day. If two more smelt appear the next day, the pumps are cut more, and so on. Since Jan. 1, the State Water Project has lost nearly 370,000 acre-feet of water, enough to serve the residential needs of San Jose for nearly three years." This is how the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been implemented on a day-by-day,...

Meg Whitman and the Delta Smelt Meg Whitman’s charitable foundation, established ostensibly for charitable purposes, inexplicably gave at least $300,000 to the Environmental Defense Fund’s Center For Rivers and Deltas. In 2007, Meg Whitman’s foundation gave $100,000 to EDF. Not content with that amount, Meg Whitman doubled down in 2008 by donating $200,000. The water crisis is affecting jobs in the Central Valley, with most cities and towns hovering near a 15% unemployment rate. The EDF has continually sided with the fish over the farmers and Meg Whitman’s $300,000 donation helped fund these efforts. Over the past few years, EDF...

A plan that could have brought relief to the drought ravaged central valley was rejected by the Department of Interior. Indolent bureaucrats killed the project so that “experts” could review the scientific underpinnings of the project. No federal “experts” have provided any suggestions as to how farmers in the Valley are expected to survive. The proposed solution for sparing the stupid Delta Smelt, a tiny fish prone to suicide, was to construct barriers in river channels in hopes of appeasing environmental bedlamites and spare the Valley from complete decimation. “The idea is to submerge massive barriers in river channels to...

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

Two environmental groups sued the federal government Friday seeking greater habitat protections for two San Francisco Bay-delta fish species, one of them the delta smelt, a small but important creature in California's water wars. One lawsuit asks a federal judge in Sacramento to require the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to respond to the groups' March 2006 request to change the delta smelt's status from "threatened" to "endangered." That action would somewhat tighten federal standards for development or water-use permits. A second suit, filed in San Francisco, challenges the federal agency's decision in April to deny protected status to the...

Environmentalism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein votes to deny water to California's drought-stricken San Joaquin Valley. Farmers, families and food are being held hostage to an endangered fish called the delta smelt. (snip) The Senate rejected the amendment by a largely party-line 61-36 margin, with Feinstein opposing the restoration of water deliveries to farmers. The California senator claimed she was blindsided by the amendment to the bill she was managing in the Senate, bizarrely comparing the move to a "Pearl Harbor." "No one from California has called, written or indicated they wanted this on the calendar," Feinstein protested.