Problem isn't drought, but mismanagement by government

Posted by $ blarman 8 years, 1 month ago to Science
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The real problem with the fish is actually there if you read between the lines: the fish exit the river into San Francisco Bay.

One can do a quick study of the buildup of the Bay area over the past 50 years and one can see that much of the Bay itself has been filled in to support housing growth. In creating all that land, they have altered the makeup of the Bay by making it shallower - and consequently warmer. The drought only exacerbates this.

I love salmon. They're tasty. But I can't support cutting off the farmers from their water rights in the hopes a few more will make it downriver. Droughts happen. Either nature will recover or it won't. But blaming and taking it out on the farmers by abrogating their property rights isn't the answer.
SOURCE URL: http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Northern-California-salmon-run-devastated-again-6799294.php


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  • Posted by scojohnson 8 years, 1 month ago
    Salmon have little to do with it. The intake pumps for Southern California are in the Bay Delta. If the salt water moves into the Delta with insufficient outflows, the water would become brackish and unusable. To keep fresh water at the pumps, we have to continuously release water from Folsom dam to keep outflow pushing the salt water back to the bay.

    My wife is a hydrology civil engineer, she did a paper on it in grad school, she laughs every time they talk about Delta Smelt, salmon runs, etc.
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    • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 1 month ago
      I don't think the salmon care much about any of that delta salinity stuff. They don't spawn in the delta. They do rear their young in the causeway sometimes. But, they just follow the smell till they get to their spawning grounds, which are always in fresh water.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 8 years, 1 month ago
    Taking away farmer's property rights in a free society is so wrong that it goes against every concept of such a society.
    Taking away farmer's property rights under today's administration: Just another day at the office.
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  • Posted by freedomforall 8 years, 1 month ago
    Part of the problem is hubris. Part is the necessity of government to pretend it is the all powerful solution to problems they are clueless to solve.
    blarman, you are right, government can't fix changes in weather or longer term climate. Still they lie in order to expand their power, and they blame and punish the innocent producers.
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  • Posted by plusaf 8 years, 1 month ago
    So, if there's a Long-Term Drought, what's the advantage of having lots of upstream storage?
    If there were NO dams, how would the salmon populations have reacted to a Long Drought?
    Are we pushing on a rope for a solution?

    ps... during one of the two drought periods in NC since we moved here from CA, I suggested dredging our main water storage dammed lakes so that when the wet/dry cycle turned wet again, we'd have 'more water in the bank.'
    No interest. No takers, and our city's water supply lake is managed by the Corps of Engineers... from Atlanta. Solutions up here are just not on their radar screen.
    We still like the area, though... :)
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  • Posted by $ Abaco 8 years, 1 month ago
    My house is by the American River, in the heart of this watershed. I have been a recreational salmon fisherman since the age of about 8. What we need out here is more storage in the foothills - a lot more.
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    • Posted by $ Susanne 8 years, 1 month ago
      Agreed... then you have the people saying "Raze O'Shaughennesy Dam and drain Hetch Hetchy" out of one side of their mouths, and "Build canals under the valley to loot the water
      from the north to feed the lawns of the south". As if the people in SoCal somehow -deserve- the water up here because, well, they're in LA and we're poor country hicks in the north.

      You would think that water fell out of the sky or someth... wait a minute... Hmmm....

      Problem is, really, it doesn't. We have reservoirs because we have flush years and lean years. Those of us on wells that didn't go dry (like us) 2 years ago went dry last year (the rest of our neighbors) - we had to double our well depth to get back into water, because we got NO snow on the mountains. It was so bad the permanent glacier on the top of Mt. Lassen - there since the mountain cooled off in the late teens - melted off.

      To give you an idea how bad it is... This is the first time our well went dry since 1980. Our creek next door - that used to have a good enough year-round flow to warrant stocking with fish - has had entire months of zero flow. The people before us used to rely on 80 foot wells and a flowing creek for water - not any more.

      While we DO need a LOT more storage (look at Shasta and Trinity lakes - both of which you could drive around on the bottom of last summer) people DO have to realize if you live in a desert, that water for your 10 acre lawn has to come from somewhere - and currently it's being looted from those of us up here. Better example - Look at pictures of the Owens Valley (and the hills surrounding it) in the (pre-Mulholland) 1920's, and the same pictures after LACP&W drained the valley. One is lush, verdant, green producing farms and verdant mountains, the other is stark, arid desert.

      Management IS ONE problem, but common sense (or lack thereof) is the other.
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  • Posted by $ jdg 8 years, 1 month ago
    There has been almost no landfill built in the Bay in the last 50 years. But there is quite a bit of landfill there -- much of it dating back to the Gold Rush.

    The water problem is unrelated. (The Bay is salt water.) It's all about the lack of a free market in water, mostly because the state's various dams and aqueducts were built with federal tax money, which comes with political conditions that now control who gets the water and at what prices. Those conditions originally put farmers first (and the farmers still pay about 1% of the residential price for their water), but with the creation of the EPA and the Clean Water Act, environmental demands come first now.

    I want to see the federal structures privatized, a free market in water, and the farmers paying full price. That will probably drive a lot of California's farmers away, but why can't they grow at least the most water-intensive crops (almonds and rice) in Kansas instead? Where they have periodic flooding instead of droughts?

    In any case, though, I don't buy calling a condition that exists in 7 out of 10 years a drought. The only non-political problem is really not enough dams. A free market in water will provide the money to build more dams, and we need them. I don't think the feds will do so, so at least we don't have to worry about that.
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 8 years, 1 month ago
    Swiming pools and golf courses in southern california have more rights than people or fish in central and northern california. simiple equation.

    won't be long before the canal from Columbia river to LA section of the Greater LA plan is put back on the table.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 8 years, 1 month ago
    True, like always in all things liberal progressive and the mindless...blame others first!
    Like our little ones blaming their siblings for their own behavior.
    Now, do we see the mentality or lack thereof we are dealing with here.
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  • Posted by Bethesda-gal 8 years, 1 month ago
    The only presidential candidate I've heard mention this issue at all - and precisely in terms of govt policy mismanagement - is Carly Fiorina.
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    • Posted by $ 8 years, 1 month ago
      Probably because she's the only candidate living in California. Neither Bernie nor Hillary care because it's the Democrats who have been abrogating the water rights in the first place. Most of the Republicans are too busy worrying about states where they have a chance to win - and California ain't one of them.
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