They were able to put off having water meters for decades in the Sacramento area.

CV farmers: "Gimme, gimme, gimme. No fair he gets to get food to make money instead of me!!! Stupid other food guy isn't even on land!!! He's got plenty of water all around that boat, why can't I have it?!!"


My response: "Hey farmer guy, you can have as much water was you want to put on your Central Valley land... as long as you take it from where the salmon live the majority of their lives. That will make you happy, right..?.. taking water from the fish?.. Go on... it's all yours..."

Grew up on Sacto. Delta, grandfather the main buyer for Del Monte, probably best farmland in the world. 3 crops of tomatoes a year. Need lots of sun and LOTS of water. But most farming on Delta was relatively small orchards, with "gourmet" crops like walnuts, almonds, peaches, pears, asparagus. Except for rice, where they have to flood the fields, less large-scale agricorps in N. CA, where the salmon run, than in the Valley south. So may not be such a good vs. bad story of poor salmon against big bad corps. Much of the salmon in CA come from huge hatcheries run by the state.

We need the fish and we need the crops...pretty bad situation...whatever happened to saline removal plants...we need something...because people need to eat...

Trumpish, to be sure. One lady referred to 'that Jerry Brown crew' with a twisted sort of leering expression.

At least this is basic resource allocation conflict, not pure racism or pro-Russianism. Their signs were well-designed and all exactly alike.

Once I asked what they were protesting I wished I had not. I thought they might be teachers or something.

They clearly thought all the fish should just die.

They would build more dams and take it all if they could, and then they would whine for more.

They already take most of the California's water, 60-80% depending on how you do the accounting, and a large portion of the amount left to nature simply can't be taken in without sucking up salt water on the lower elevations of our rivers, or as seawater and drainwater intrusion into groundwater.

Personally, I find the dairy industry most onerous.

Most California dairy cows do not live on green sunny hillsides, they live in Central Valley hell, places not fit for man or beast, fed crops that require huge amounts of subsidized water.

Devin Nunes is representative of Central Valley Dairy culture. This culture stinks as much as the cows who live their entire lives standing on mountains of shit, only to be turned into cheap mechanically deboned hamburger when their milk production drops.

I won't apologize for being a liberal coastal elite who doesn't drink milk, doesn't eat meat most days, and doesn't think children should regularly be drinking milk either.

People in industries other than farming frequently have to deal with radical changes in their lifestyles. Entire factories are shut down and everyone is laid off, sometimes thousands at a time. New disruptive industries emerge. Consumer demand for some product plummets. Environmental regulations make a polluting industry unprofitable. There is nothing sacred about farming and I don't see any reason to coddle a few nasty old white men who went full out racist when we elected a black president, who are ridiculously trying to rename soy milk, people who might not have any business at all without generous state and federal subsidies and regulations that allow them to largely ignore the heavy environmental and social costs of their industries.

....they would vote for it.

Chinook Salmon once was plentiful in California...not any more. Many farmers fight tooth and nail to avoid converting over to drip irrigation....they still want to flood irrigate. In their mind, if they don't use all the water allocated to them, then they won't get the same amount next year. In fact, when water saving measures are placed in and the excess is diverted to the cities. They bitch and moan that they didn't get the excess...despite the fact it was the cities that paid for it which is something they wouldn't do.

"Food grows where water flows"...yeah, it never used to flow where your farm is at until it was diverted. And it doesn't have to "flow" anymore, it can drip. And you don't have to use water heavy crops either.