Chris Shively: Environmentalists’ spin is what got us, and fish, into this fix

Re “Do environmentalists really want to destroy Valley farms? Not at all” (Page 1B, Oct. 6): Gary Bobker’s response to Lance Johnson’s op-ed (“Learn from history ... fight to keep your water,” Oct. 2, Page 1D) was typical for an environmentalist. It was filled with baseless rhetoric with an intention to invoke fear and calls for change. He completely ignored the facts in Johnson’s article and went into the dire predictions for our state’s climate and water supply.

What Bobker and his like-minded colleagues would like more than anything is to scare the public into believing the state government should have control over all water. Now, after the evidence shows their policies of increasing through-delta flows and failure to pump from Tracy do not work, their solution is more water? Then Bobker pompously blames the poor policy results on those who fought against the original policies and lost. Wow.

It is similar environmentalists who have been placed in charge of the State Water Resources Control Board. Bobker claims he and other environmentalists have no intention of hurting farmers. Yet they continue to use the endangered species act to push policies that create unnecessary hardship without any positive results for fish. These results are ignored and blame placed on opponents. Incredible.

This story was originally published October 10, 2016 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Chris Shively: Environmentalists’ spin is what got us, and fish, into this fix."