re: #1 Dark_Falcon

What harm is the Delta smelt causing? It’s keeping the politically well connected from making money?
I will excuse you from having an in-depth knowledge of water in California, but it is far, far more complicated than most non-Californians realize. You’re probably also too young (and I really don’t mean that as dismissive-but having actually experienced these things helps in understanding) to remember water quality nationwide in the early 1960s. Or what bad air quality was like in that same time frame. Cleaning up each of these was controversial at the time, as was saving endangered species because Progress! Too often we don’t know what harm we cause until it is too late.

We can also ask the question why should farmers get the water at the expense of fishermen?
To give a specific example, why should corporate farms growing alfalfa in the desert, the vast majority of which will be shipped overseas, have a higher priority than reestablishing a continuous flow of water in the San Joaquin River and thus restoring a salmon population. Fresno’s Friant Dam blocks the flow of a lot of source water from the mountains so parts of the river are bone dry. There have been years recently when there was no salmon season at all, which has been really hard on the fishermen.