Dehydrated California Loses $2 Million To Save Nine Fish

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Investors Business Daily:

The travesty of California's government-created water shortage is causing economic miseries and even rebellions in local communities throughout the state, and nowhere more than in the San Joaquin Valley.

 

Anger over water-management policies and environmental rules has reached such a pitch that two local water districts have defied the State Water Resources Control Board and a federal court order requiring the state to release local water from reservoirs in order to save fish downstream.

 

A new report by the Lake Tulloch Alliance, a community conservation group, estimates that the edict may cost local residents as much as $2 million in economic value of scarce water for every steelhead fish saved.

 

Some 30,000 acres of desperately needed water at $750 per acre-foot has been ordered to be released into the San Joaquin River Delta to save as few as nine fish, the report says.

 

"It's an absolutely absurd waste of a precious resource needed in our community," protests Alliance president Jack Cox. "It's even a disaster for the environment or the wildlife here."