Clearly, state believes fish are more important than people

Re “How to move past water wars, save the Delta” (Page 7A, July 12): The article by Felicia Marcus, chairwoman of the State Water Resources Control Board, shows us where the problem is. Fish are more important than people, at least that’s what Bay Area people think. Marcus says water users can adapt; fish can’t. She says farmers should switch crops. She evidently thinks it’s a small matter to pull an orchard that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and replant winter oats.

She didn’t say what crop to switch to. I suppose one that doesn’t take water.

She fails to mention any actions that fishermen can take to make hatchery programs work. We should take eggs from returning salmon and raise the little fish until they can return to the sea to become mature fish. These programs have worked, but environmentalist resisted the programs because they said it wasn’t natural. I have caught hatchery raised fish in the ocean. There is no difference once they have lived a few years in the ocean, surviving against natural preditors.

There are 7.6 billion people in the world, growing by 80 million per year. We need to feed them. Irrigated land in California is an important part of that job. Seems like the environmentalist should adapt.