Creating water scarcity: California 2011

Milton Friedman observed "If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand."

California's precipitation this season has gone off the charts. Statewide snow water content is 198 percent of normal; in the all-important Northern Sierra snowpack is 174 percent of normal. This is not only a wet year — it is one of the wettest years on record.

Yet despite unprecedented abundance of water, the Bureau of Reclamation will only guarantee delivery of 45 percent of the California Central Valley's contracted water supply south of the Delta. This is the same percentage they received last year with barely average rainfall.

This is of crucial importance to the entire nation, since the Central Valley of California is one of the largest producers of our nation's food supply. California produces half of the U.S.-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables on the nation's grocery shelves and the prices you pay are directly affected by the California harvest.
The deliberate decision by this administration in 2009 and 2010 to divert hundreds of billions of gallons of water away from the Central Valley destroyed a quarter million acres of the most productive farmland in America, it threw tens of thousands of families into unemployment and it affected grocery prices across the country.
At the time, the administration blamed a mild drought, but never explained why a drought justified their decision to pour 200 billion gallons of water (that we did have) directly into the Pacific Ocean.

Why would our rulers behave as if they were utterly insane? Because they are moonbats.

The real reason for this irrational policy, of course, is that they were indulging the environmental Left's pet cause, a three-inch minnow called the Delta Smelt. Diverting precious water to Delta Smelt habitat was considered more important than producing the food that feeds the country and preserving the jobs that produce the food.

Now that libs' precious minnows have more than enough water for their habitat, can farmers have some water to grow food? No they cannot. The insanity continues:

At the same time this Administration is denying California Central Valley agriculture 1.1 million acre feet of their rightfully contracted water in one of the wettest years on record, it is dumping 1.4 million acre feet of additional water into the Pacific Ocean.

Maybe this isn't about useless minnows after all. Maybe it's about a government hostile to the people it rules that deliberately creates shortages so that it can hold more power over us by rationing.