| Delta pumps throttled back despite rains, cutting California water deliveries to protect fish | |
| By Ryan Sabalow and Dale Kasler |
Source: sacbee |
1/1/2022 |
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Credit: Craig Kohlruss |
Joe Del Bosque, like other San Joaquin Valley farmers, had been watching with rising hope the massive amounts of rain and snow that’s fallen in California this winter.
Del Bosque is dependent on water pumped south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to irrigate his crops on the Valley’s west side in Fresno and Merced counties. These last two years of drought-driven pumping restrictions have forced him to leave fields barren and reduce water available to his valuable almond trees — cutting into his bottom line. |
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He’d hoped the federal government would crank up its pumps and start sending water his way now that the Delta is flush with storm runoff in what’s so far been a remarkably wet fall and winter in much of Northern California.
Instead, to protect Delta smelt — a nearly extinct fish that’s come to symbolize California’s never-ending fight over water — regulators throttled back the pumps that supply drinking water to 25 million people from Silicon Valley to Orange County and millions of acres of farmland like Del Bosque’s. |
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