Joel Maring: Mismanagement of Shasta will cost West Side growers

The State Water Resources Control Board has reneged on its own plan to set flows from Shasta Dam at 9,000 cubic feet per second in July and 8,000 cfs in August in favor of a maximum flow of 7,500 cfs. This is being done to conserve more water in Shasta for, you guessed it, salmon.

The desire is to save water now to create lower river temperatures later in the year. One result is that current flows into the Delta do not allow for pumping into the Central Valley Project at Tracy. Consequently, several West Side irrigation districts are in jeopardy of losing water “banked” during the winter in San Luis Reservoir since it now lies south of their canals and cannot be replaced with water from the CVP canal.

The environmental lobby, along with compliant officials in government, appear obsessed with doing everything possible to ensure the last entity to realize there is a drought is the environment itself. Resources developed by and for the benefit of man are being misappropriated to fool fish into thinking everything is normal, with no mandate to prove its effectiveness. Given the power of groups with names like the Nature Conservancy, I ask: How natural is that?

This story was originally published June 29, 2015 at 6:02 PM with the headline "Joel Maring: Mismanagement of Shasta will cost West Side growers."