Enviros favor the lives of two-inch fish over the livelihood of
farmers. A federal judge has finally told them: Enough! Nearly
four years after environmentalists launched a campaign to kill
farming in California’s huge Central Valley, ostensibly to save
a two-inch fish, the Delta Smelt, a U.S. District Court judge
has ruled that the federal government’s restrictions on farm
water were “unworthy of the public trust.” It began in March
2007 when a local environmental group persuaded a county judge
to tell the State of California to either shut down the huge
pumps that move northern water into the Central Valley or obtain
permits to legally kill the “endangered” Delta Smelt (the
plaintiffs claimed such large numbers of them were being sucked
into the pumps that the species was threatened with extinction).
A survey by the Delta Smelt Working Group, a committee of
scientists from three federal and two state agencies, blamed
pesticide use for many of the smelt deaths, but reasoned that a
reduction in southbound pum