Thousands of Californians are suffering from a severe water shortage, and recently the Obama Administration added insult to injury.

In June, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued an Endangered Species Act “biological opinion” on the effects that state and federal water projects have on Chinook salmon, steelhead, green sturgeon and killer whales.

The Service’s action puts these species well above humans on the totem pole and threatens to impose new and drastic cutbacks in water deliveries to municipalities and farmers in the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.

The administration’s decision could not come at a worse time.

A number of San Joaquin Valley communities are already experiencing staggering unemployment rates, as high as 40 percent in some cases. Some farms have been forced to idle farmland as a result of receiving only 10 percent of their historic contracted water supplies.

Water deliveries will be cut back even further under the new biological opinion — the NMFS projects a total water loss of 330,000 acre-feet per year (enough to meet the annual water needs of nearly one million people), but other agencies like the California Department of Water Resources consider that estimate low.

The latest federal biological opinion comes on top of a December 2008 decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that resulted in cutting water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California, as part of regulatory efforts to help a small fish, the delta smelt.

In other words, federal environmental restrictions and regulations are jeopardizing the livelihoods of thousands throughout California, and food for millions of American consumers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger clearly understands the absurd nature of the Endangered Species Act water cutbacks.

“This federal biological opinion puts fish above the needs of millions of Californians and the health and security of the world’s eighth largest economy,” he said, noting further that the federal government’s fish-before-people policy is “killing our economy and undermining the integrity of the Endangered Species Act.”

In April, the governor took the time to join farm workers, farmers and community leaders in a march for water, and he was quick to point out at the march that Washington needs to listen more carefully to the concerns of California.

Indeed, he concluded his remarks by stating, “I will not quit until we get water, because we need water.”

The governor can and should put powerful action behind those words by appealing to the Obama Administration for immediate relief. The longer this latest biological opinion is allowed to stand, the more likely some of the world’s most productive farmland will become a government-created wasteland.

Fortunately, the Endangered Species Act allows for such an appeal. State governors have authority to formally request the Secretary of the Interior to convene a special committee under the ESA.

This Endangered Species Committee, also known as the “God Squad,” can determine whether to exempt a project from the burdens of the ESA. The God Squad would be able to exempt California’s water projects from newly proposed ESA restrictions.

The situation is desperate. By formally requesting the Obama Administration to convene the God Squad, the governor would be following through on his promise to fight on behalf of California farmers, farm workers, businesses and all water consumers.

 

The authors are attorneys with Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org). Based in Sacramento, PLF is the leading legal watchdog for property rights and a balanced approach to environmental regulations. PLF’s emergency “Save our Water” petition (available, with background information, at www.pacificlegal.org) asks President Obama and Gov. Schwarzenegger to act to convene the “God Squad” to deal with California’s water crisis.