I liked the rest of your post but I cannot agree with this. The dams that they did succeed in putting up are not nearly as useful as once believed, and they have ended up costing us much more than they are worth. Each year it costs more to transport migrating fish around the dams than they take in with electric generation, and the Colorado flushes so much silt downstream that Lake Powell and Lake Mead will be virtually useless as reservoirs in as little as 50 years. The snow pack in the Sierra Mountains is at 5% of average this year, and there is a growing body of evidence that shows the water levels and flow rates calculated at the turn of the last century were measured at a time of unusually plentiful water, and that the '500 year drought' is actually the norm for this region.
The larger issue with the drought in California is you have the nation's most heavily populated state in a desert climate. The carrying capacity of that region has been completely outstripped for at least a generation, but they refuse to see it that way.
Seeing the environmental impact of such large scale operations as 'a few fish and worms or something' is precisely the root of the problem. Destroying the balance of a biosphere just so a few million more people can live in luxury in a desert climate is unconscionable. The fertile farm and fishing grounds that made California what it is was only made possible because of free flowing rivers which provide silt and nutrients from upstream, and fish runs from the sea. Those nutrients have been gone for 50 years, replaced with agricultural chemicals and fish barges.
I used to think a river was just water, damming it up was no big deal to provide water reserves, but once you start researching what actually goes on and what natural forces are disrupted, and the consequences of those actions, my viewpoint changed 180 degrees. The federal subsidies in place to create the illusion of a healthy river and water economy is total insanity, but you would never know about it unless you cared to look.
I'm not going to debate you on these issues and before you judge, think about the middle ground please.
People are going to move into the basin and you can't stop that. You have to deal with it. As far as the actual article I had saved a portion to a document but did not save the reference. Here is an excerpt to what I posted:
"Droughts are nothing new in California, but right now, 70 percent of California's rainfall washes out to sea because liberals have prevented the construction of a single new reservoir or a single new water conveyance system over decades, during a period in which California’s population has doubled,” said Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard and likely GOP presidential candidate. “This is the classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people's lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology.”
Releasing the water is supposed to save the endangered fish population, including the Delta Smelt, Longfin Smelt, four runs of Chinook Salmon, the Steelhead, Green and White Sturgeon, Splittail and the Sacramento hitch, but so far the fish population has decreased, according to experts. A state survey in March found just 6 Delta Smelt – four females and two males – prompting wildlife experts to estimate the species' population has dropped to 5,000 or fewer from the millions in the last 40 years.
"Prepare for the extinction of the Delta Smelt in the wild,” UC Davis fish biologist Peter Moyle said. “The population today may be too low to sustain itself,” Moyle said. “Fish ready to spawn have to find one another in a big area. If spawning is successful, there have to be enough eggs and larvae that some individuals survive to become the next generation of spawners.”
Jim Burling of the Pacific Legal Foundation said while water diversions have not helped endangered fish populations, the policies are devastating to people, produce and the economy.
“The plan is not doing anything for the fish and causing a lot of pain for farmers and farm workers,” Burling said. “The impact of these policies on people should be considered.”
The state has more than 80,000 farms and ranches, which generate more than $44 billion in annual sales. California produces more than 250 different crops, leads the U.S. in production of 75 commodities, and, according to the Water Education Foundation, is the only state to produce 12 key crops such as almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, raisins, kiwi, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes and walnuts.
During the current drought, which began in 2012, and by some estimates could be the most severe in recorded history, billions of gallons of water have been diverted from farmlands, according to a report by the Washington D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, with the American Farm Bureau estimating that between 400,000 acres and 500,000 acres of crops will be lost."
Now this was written from a conservative point obviously. I could find nothing from the liberal view except to conserve water. When something like this happens I try to find opposite viewpoints because almost always the truth (and the solutions) are going to be in the middle. I cut and paste the opposing views together and that way I can go back and use them for reference. Unfortunately "conserving water" is not an action it is a reaction. It could get better right? I doubt it though since it has been a desert for a long time.
The longer article I copied has to do more with the water runoff and the building of reservoirs than the building of dams. Here's my point: You can't control where people migrate right? Well, you could but that is a whole different can of worms. The basin has become a vital part of the US economy in many ways so it and the people who live there have to be taken care of right? Providing water is one of those basic needs. Someone, (the government at many levels) has to make decisions. Lose some fish (in this case fish that didn't make it anyway) or not be able to provide people (rich and poor, black and white, male and female) with a basic necessity like enough water. Hindsight is always 20/20 but you have to deal with reality sometime. Maybe it will rain but it won't ever be enough unless some type of additional storage is built. No matter what, building additional storage is going to piss some group of people off. It will be a fish there, or a tree here, or a bit of land over yonder or a burial ground up the street. No matter what you can never make everyone happy. In the meantime what is being done to provide water to a huge population center and Ag producer? Nothing. That's what I meant.
