Sean Hannity in the San Joaquin Valley

On Thursday, September 17, 2009, Sean Hannity will visit the San Joaquin Valley for a live broadcast. He will devote his entire program to the water crisis facing our state.

It is important to give Sean a warm welcome and to thank him for his vigilant efforts to increase national awareness of the man-made drought.

Details about the broadcast are below:

What: LIVE broadcast of the Sean Hannity Show
When: Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Time: Please arrive by 5:00 pm
Where: A fallowed field on the Westside in Fresno County
Directions: Located on the south side of Highway 198, to the west of the Fresno/Kings County line. The field is exactly 8 miles west of Lemoore Naval Air Station. The field is marked with a speed limit sign and a white wrought iron gate. The area will also be clearly marked with signs and banners.

In addition to the Hannity broadcast next week, I would like to call your attention to several editorial responses recently published by The Wall Street Journal. These responses (see below) relate to the Journal’s coverage of the water crisis as well as my recent editorial. They were written by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Environmental Defense Fund Regional Director Laura Harnish and highlight the challenges we face by exposing the people who are working to prevent a meaningful resolution.

It is noteworthy that Secretary Salazar again denies a man-made drought exists and Ms. Harnish believes that the root of the problem is that farmers don’t pay enough for water.

From The Wall Street Journal
Central Valley Water: Nor Any Drop for Plants to Drink

Your editorial "California's Man-Made Drought" (Sept. 2) about the severe drought and water crisis in California argues that California's water problems could be wished away if our nation were only willing to sacrifice an endangered three-inch fish, turn on a few pumps to move water from Northern California to the Central Valley, and wave a magic wand. The trouble is: The fish are a sliver of the problem, the pumps are already on, and pointed fingers can't make it rain.


California's water crisis is far more troubling than your editorial suggests. The state is in its third year of a devastating drought, caused by a lack of precipitation. In California's Central Valley, where half the nation's produce is grown, many farms and fields are bone dry, unemployment has surged, and the state's inadequate water infrastructure—built 50 years ago for a population half as large—cannot handle the stress. Moreover, California's Bay Delta, upon which 25 million Californians depend for drinking water, is in a state of full environmental collapse.


As a proposed response, your editorial asks the Obama administration to ignore science and convene a so-called "God Squad" that would override protections on watersheds and turn California's water crisis over to the courts. Trying to force more water out of a dying system will only cause more human tragedy, while diverting attention from the governor and the legislature, who face a Sept. 11 legislative deadline to decide whether to fix the broken water system in California after decades of neglect.


Rather than more finger pointing, we need real solutions. After eight years on the sidelines, the federal government has stepped in to help. The Obama administration is investing over $400 million through the president's economic recovery plan to help modernize California's water infrastructure, including over $40 million in emergency assistance to help water-short Central Valley farmers. We have helped move record amounts of water to communities in most need and are taking steps to prepare for a potential fourth year of drought. And perhaps most importantly, the federal government is now engaging as a full partner in the collaborative process that the governor launched two years ago to restore the Bay Delta, and modernize the state's woefully outdated water infrastructure. Though what we need most is rain and snow to fill the reservoirs, these actions will help mitigate the devastating impact of the ongoing drought and deliver help to the families and communities suffering most.


This is the type of locally-driven, solution-oriented, collaborative approach that we must all support—and to which we must all contribute.

Ken Salazar
Secretary of the Interior
Washington


It's not about fish, it's about market fairness. In California's water rights system, farmers on one side of the Central Valley pay less than $10 for an acre-foot of water (enough water to cover an acre one-foot deep), while those on the other side are forced to pay up to 60 times more—$600 an acre-foot—to keep trees alive.


What is needed is a new and fair set of market-based rules, created by water stakeholders and California's government, that can spawn new industries and new jobs, while intelligently allocating the state's water to serve agriculture, cities and suburbs, recreational users and nature.

Laura Harnish
Regional Director
Environmental Defense Fund

California's Man-Made Drought

California's Man-Made Drought
The green war against San Joaquin Valley farmers

California has a new endangered species on its hands in the San Joaquin Valley—farmers. Thanks to environmental regulations designed to protect the likes of the three-inch long delta smelt, one of America's premier agricultural regions is suffering in a drought made worse by federal regulations.

The state's water emergency is unfolding thanks to the latest mishandling of the Endangered Species Act. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a "biological opinion" imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento have been channeled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

For this, Californians can thank the usual environmental suspects, er, lawyers. Last year's government ruling was the result of a 2006 lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other outfits objecting to increased water pumping in the smelt vicinity. In June, things got even dustier when the National Marine Fisheries Service concluded that local salmon and steelhead also needed to be defended from the valley's water pumps. Those additional restrictions will begin to effect pumping operations next year.

The result has already been devastating for the state's farm economy. In the inland areas affected by the court-ordered water restrictions, the jobless rate has hit 14.3%, with some farming towns like Mendota seeing unemployment numbers near 40%. Statewide, the rate reached 11.6% in July, higher than it has been in 30 years. In August, 50 mayors from the San Joaquin Valley signed a letter asking President Obama to observe the impact of the draconian water rules firsthand.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that he "doesn't have the authority to turn on the pumps" that would supply the delta with water, or "otherwise, they would be on." He did, however, have the ability to request intervention from the Department of Interior. Under a provision added to the Endangered Species Act in 1978 after the snail darter fiasco, a panel of seven cabinet officials known as a "God Squad" is able to intercede in economic emergencies, such as the one now parching California farmers. Despite a petition with more than 12,000 signers, Mr. Schwarzenegger has refused that remedy.

The issue now turns to the Obama Administration and the courts, though the farmers have so far found scant hope for relief from the White House. In June, the Administration denied the governor's request to designate California a federal disaster area as a result of the drought conditions, which U.S. Drought Monitor currently lists as a "severe drought" in 43% of the state. Doing so would force the Administration to acknowledge awkward questions about the role its own environmental policies have played in scorching the Earth.

As the crisis has deepened, the political stakes have risen as well. In late August, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack came to the devastated valley to meet with farmers and community leaders. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein has pledged to press the issue with Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. "There are 30 lawsuits on the biological opinions and two separate opinions, one for the smelt and one for the salmon," Ms. Feinstein said, "The rules need to be reconsidered."

The Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a lawsuit on behalf of three farmers in the valley, calling the federal regulations "immoral and unconstitutional." Because the delta smelt is only found in California, the Foundation says, it does not fall under the regulatory powers provided by the Constitution's Commerce Clause. On a statutory basis, the Fish and Wildlife Service also neglected to appropriately consider the economic devastation the pumping restrictions would bring.

Things in California may have to get so bad that they endanger Democratic Congressional incumbents before Washington wakes up, but it doesn't have to be that way. Mr. Salazar has said that convening the God Squad would be "admitting failure" in the effort to save the smelt under the Endangered Species Act. Maybe so, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of humans are also at stake. If the Obama Administration wants to help, it can take up Governor Schwarzenegger's request that it revisit the two biological opinions that are hanging farmers and farm workers out to dry.

For the editorial online and reader comments click here.

Health Care Reform

I am very pleased that so many people were able to join me this morning at Clovis East High School to learn about the health reform legislation moving through Congress. I expected to hear from people representing the entire political spectrum and I did. Liberals, conservatives, and independent voters joined medical professionals from across the valley in a very civil but very impassioned forum. It was a great success and a model for civil discourse.

I started today’s event by making clear my opposition to the current health reform bill – H.R. 3200. I oppose the bill because it takes choice away from Americans; it takes control away from patients and doctors; and it vastly expands government power and spending.

In addition, as a Congressman responsible for advocating on behalf of a large number of low-income Americans, I have a heightened interest in and concern for Medicaid beneficiaries. Patients served by this government-run program have no meaningful choices when it comes to their own health care and are experiencing nothing less than second class medicine today. It is a travesty that our government can claim to be compassionate while trapping millions of Americans in a health system that has outcomes far worse than privately insured Americans – outcomes that include unnecessarily high mortality rates. It is potentially an even greater tragedy that some in Congress haven’t learned their lesson about government-run health programs and are trying to create a new one.

While I strongly oppose H.R. 3200 or any effort to create a new government health program, I do believe that Congress needs to pass health care reforms. Members of Congress, including myself, have a responsibility to do more than say ‘no’ to a bad plan – we need to have a plan and our ideas should be in writing. I do have a plan and it’s a comprehensive alternative that offers universal access to health care without bankrupting our nation or depriving the American people of choice. In fact, my bill, authored jointly by Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) and Senators Tom Coburn (Oklahoma) and Richard Burr (North Carolina) is all about choice – its title is the Patients’ Choice Act and it is available on my website for public inspection and comment.

In closing, I want to express my appreciation to the people who took the time to learn about H.R. 3200 today. It is essential that the public understand the reforms that are likely to become law.

It's Fish Versus Farmers in the San Joaquin Valley

by Devin Nunes

In 1931, a severe drought began that within a few years engulfed the Oklahoma panhandle and a third of the Great Plains in a "Dust Bowl." Tens of thousands of people fled the region—many traveling to California along Route 66, which John Steinbeck called "the mother road, the road of flight" in "The Grapes of Wrath."

A lot of the "Okies" settled in the San Joaquin Valley. In the decades that followed, state and federal officials built dams and other irrigation projects that helped turn the valley into some of the world's richest farmland.

But today the San Joaquin Valley is being transformed into a dust bowl. Hundreds of thousands of acres are fallow, while almond and plum trees are being left to die in the scorching sun. Tens of thousands of people have been tossed out of work—the town of Mendota alone has an unemployment rate of about 40%—and the lines for food donations stretch down streets. The reason? There isn't enough water to go around this year, and the Obama administration is drawing up new reasons to divert more of it from farms and people and into the San Francisco Bay.

The valley has traditionally been a place where someone with few belongings, little education and even no ability to speak English could prosper by picking grapes, milking cows, or hoeing cotton fields. The hearty people who came here were Portuguese, Mexican, Armenian, Italian, Basque and Dutch, along with westward-traveling Americans and Okies. More recent arrivals are from El Salvador, Vietnam and India. I am the product of a Portuguese family that came decades ago.

California has the largest water storage and transportation system in the world. With 1,200 miles of canals and nearly 50 reservoirs, the system captures enough water to irrigate about four million acres and provide water to 23 million people. In many cases, as with the San Joaquin Valley, water in this system is sold to communities by the federal government.

Some claim that California is facing a three-year-old drought. But, according to the state's Department of Water Resources, California reservoirs have received 80% of their normal amount of water and precipitation in the northern Sierras has been 95% of its yearly average this year. So why isn't there more water for farms? Because theirs is a regulatory-mandated drought. The 1973 Endangered Species Act requires that the government take steps to save endangered species. In California, that's meant diverting vast sums of water into rivers and streams to protect fish. Those diversions this year have forced federal authorities to decide who to serve—fish or farmers.

On Dec. 15, 2008, the Bush administration's Fish and Wildlife Service chose fish, a decision driven by a lawsuit filed in federal court in 2006 by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups. To settle the suit, the Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to divert more than 150 billion gallons of water this year away from farmers south of San Francisco in hopes of protecting the Delta smelt—a three-inch bait fish. The water is now flowing underneath the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, the Delta smelt isn't a particularly attractive species to protect when it means throwing Americans out of work. On June 4, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared that delivering water to farms in the San Joaquin Valley would harm killer whales in the Pacific. And to save the whales, the Obama administration is now demanding even greater water restrictions beyond what has been diverted for the smelt.

There are 130 animal species in California on the federal endangered list, including five salmon species, five steelhead species, four trout species and the North American green sturgeon. To date, not a single fish within the California water system has been removed from the Endangered Species List over the past 35 years. Despite massive amounts of water diverted to help them, the "protected" smelt, sturgeon and salmon populations have continued to decline. It is hardly unreasonable to ask why farmers should continue to suffer if diverting water hasn't even helped the fish.

Congress has the power to solve this crisis. In 2003, a fish-versus-families debate erupted in New Mexico after water deliveries to Albuquerque from the Rio Grande River were cut off to protect habitat for the silvery minnow—another three-inch bait fish. Congress temporarily suspended portions of the Endangered Species Act and guaranteed that water would be provided to Albuquerque. The situation in California is virtually identical and repeating what was done in New Mexico would do wonders for San Joaquin Valley farmers.

It would also accomplish more than what the administration currently has in mind. Next month Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is planning to hold a hearing on the situation in California, following up on a visit he made to the valley in June.

A spokesman for the Interior Department recently declared that San Joaquin Valley's water problems are a top priority for the Obama administration and that the river that flows through the valley and eventually to the ocean to form the San Joaquin Delta is as precious a natural resource as Florida's Everglades. What is precious and what President Barack Obama should come to see for himself are the 40,000 people in the valley who are desperate for water so they can get back to work.

If it doesn't start flowing any time soon, perhaps he can tell them where they should go. Back to Oklahoma?

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11

“People are awake, watching. They are vigilant.”

"The topics of water and health care dominated a talk by Congressman Devin Nunes this morning in front of Fresno business leaders.

"In the wake of conservatives mobilizing at several town hall meetings across the U.S. to voice displeasure with Pres. Obama and current health care proposals, the Tulare Republican said he is heartened by citizens becoming informed and engaged against what he called 'Obamacare.

"'I’m proud of what’s going on,' Nunes said. 'People are awake, watching. They are vigilant.'

"... Nunes reassured the crowd he will not vote for any health care proposal that includes a public option for coverage. Nunes and other Republican lawmakers have floated alternative proposals, including one that would control costs by allowing people on Medicaid to take those government funds and purchase their own private health insurance plans.

"... He also reiterated his position on the water crisis. Nunes has been one of the most vocal representatives in Congress on relaxing Endangered Species Act rules to allow more water to be pumped to San Joaquin Valley growers."

To read the full article in The Business Journal click here.

Sean Hannity highlights government-imposed water crisis

Tonight, Paul Rodriguez and I participated in a live interview with Sean Hannity on the FOX NEWS CHANNEL. We gathered in Huron with farmers, farm workers, small business leaders and others from throughout the Central Valley. Our message was simple, "turn on the pumps."

Sean's comittment to keeping our crisis in the national spotlight is enormously helpful. It compliments the work of leaders like Paul Rodriguez and Ray Appleton, who have helped increase awareness not only in our region but throughout the United States.