Fish v. Farms 10: The Endangered Endangered Species Act

Will Judge Wanger eventually overrule himself, and destroy the Endangered Species Act?

“In addition, the Court found that pumping restrictions imposed by the 2008 Biological Opinion would have substantial, detrimental, indirect effects on Westlands, the community, and the human environment.”

The human environment. Nice touch, but this is really the environment:

The judge changed his mind because the National Fish and Wildlife Service, which was charged with executing Wanger’s earlier ruling to curtail the supply of fresh water exported south from the Delta, did not conduct an environmental impact study as Westlands’ (et al) lawyers argued it was required by law to do.

Three-inch bait fish of no commercial value don’t have all the good lawyers. Of course, smart litigants that they are, they didn’t make an environmental case. How would that go, anyway? Westlands needed the water more than an endangered fish species because otherwise it couldn’t flush the toxics out of its soils, into drainage canals and eventually back to the Delta? Probably not a clever strategy.

No, consistent with other tactics in the global strategy of big ag, Westlands’ lawyers made an economic case, and did it using an environmental law as a wedge. This is as damaging a possible precedent as any that have for decades allowed corporations like General Electric to walk away from billions of dollars worth of ground and water pollution on the Hudson River, leaving taxpayers and nature to absorb their mess.

Of course, when all else fails, litigants and their political allies and supporters have begun to pull the “national security” card a favorite meme of pro-ag legislators in the San Joaquin Valley.

“If we don’t start giving our producers the resources for a domestic food supply, we are going to find ourselves in the same position with food as we are with oil, (Barry Bedwell, president of the California Grape and Tree Fruit League) warned.

And from a SJ Valley Democrat, “It would be a tragedy and a blow to national security if we did not have Westlands,” (Rep. Jim) Costa said. Is it really any wonder why Obama has not been able to do what Obama wants?

These exaggerations, of course, put the Delta smelt, not to mention every environmental organization to the left of the Corps of Engineers, one step away from the nation’s terrorist watchlist.

We like to think of California as a mythic place of mountains, beaches, sequoias, joshua trees. It is those things, but it is also a really big technological landscape. Californians are going to have to spend lots of money on it to keep it in working order. Given all of the options for how to spend money in this long-term preventative maintenance program, buying out the Westlands may be among the most cost-effective in the long run.