John Michelena: State messing with divinely inspired irrigation

California’s farm economy averted a major collapse in 2014 because farmers aggressively used groundwater to keep crops alive. But we can’t keep dodging bullets, especially as our underground water supplies are limited and governments are doing their best to tax and regulate every drop of water.

That’s why I’m more convinced than ever that California’s water problems are politically imposed and man-made, just as those freeway signs proclaim. There’s a strange obsession with our environment that dominates American politics and society, which seems like just a revolutionary way to destroy Western economies and civilizations.

Sticking to California’s water, I suppose the slide down this slippery, green slope began about 30 years ago, with a barrage of federal and state laws to protect endangered species such as salmon. Fish screens were installed and pumping south of the Delta was greatly controlled to help improve survivability of Delta smelt. That was all fine, except that West Side farmers were always expected to pay more and more to protect the environment. Our water cost kept rising exponentially as water allotments were steadily diminishing – even though reservoirs were brimming with water.

Then environmental regulations spread east and affected those farmers who were still pumping from their various rivers and reservoirs during our current dry period. County governments were getting involved too, eventually putting moratoriums on drilling new wells and restrictions and/or taxes on long-established wells.

But environmentalism never sets on the People’s Republic of California. Now irrigation water drainage is becoming the environmental rage. In essence, many farmers will be paying fees to drain water that they will never receive in the first place, and that bureaucracy is just getting started to tax something that doesn’t even exist except in the minds of government-control freaks.

This near universal control of our water has been dictated and enforced by a great multitude of federal and state agencies. Needless to say, they are all insatiable bureaucracies staffed by the most idealistic and prejudiced environmentalists.

Certainly this ecological craze has gone mainstream and viral, as even rural schools are teaching and country churches are preaching this fuzzy touchy-feely dogma of protecting the environment. Even Pope Francis is proselytizing this environmental gospel, which I strongly disapprove of as a Catholic. Our shepherd should be more concerned with saving souls, and not owls or fish.

I find it oddly paradoxical that a technologically advanced secular nation, which has practically divorced itself from God and religion, appears completely engaged in this primitive earth-worship. This modern version is no less deviant and perverse than pagan religions of millennium past.

To pray for rain is an excellent endeavor. More importantly, we must worship God and not the earth that he created for us.

It’s difficult to really know if crafty politicians truly believe in this New Age neo-paganism, but this leap into faith-based environmentalism is handy for destroying business and agriculture. We do know, however, that irrigation has been a blessing to humanity for thousands of years – one which I believe was given to us by our Creator.

This story was originally published February 20, 2015 at 4:01 PM with the headline "John Michelena: State messing with divinely inspired irrigation."