California does need to sue a government water agency for its misdirected policies that are raising havoc with the environment.

But the Governor and his band of merry politically correct environmentalists are suing the wrong government agency for the wrong environmental calamity.

After all isn’t government’s most sacred environmental crisis climate change? And aren’t our nation’s coastal cities going to be doing an Atlantis act by 2090 or — if you go by climatologist expert Dr. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s drop dead date for New York City — by the end of Bernie Sanders’ second term as president?

Sacramento should be suing itself with the state Department of Water Resources as the lead defendant instead of the federal government and the Bureau of Reclamation.

Not making light of the need to protect fish or disputing that climate change has been an issue for the planet since the day creatures with multiple cells were formed, but why worry about the future of fish when where 40 percent of the nation’s population lives will be underwater when our great-great-grandkids are marking the 100th anniversary of Elon Musk rolling out of a pickup truck that looks like an ejection pod from the Lost in Space spaceship?

The lawsuit the state is pursuing is over how much water the Longfin Smelt — not to be confused with the apparently now passé canary-in-the-delta Delta Smelt — should receive as opposed to farmers from water the federal government controls through the Central Valley Water Project.

The agency by far that is doing the most damage environmental to California due to its wanton enablement of greenhouse gas production is the state Department of Water Resources.

Take a page from the City of Oakland’s lawsuit filed in 2017 against Exxon Mobile Corp. along with four other oil companies. The city stated the following as facts in the lawsuit: “Global warning has caused and continues to cause accelerated sea level rise in San Francisco Bay and the adjacent ocean with severe, and potentially catastrophic, consequences for Oakland.”

The lawsuit further noted that by “2050, a 100-year flood in the Oakland vicinity is expected to occur on average once every 2.3 years and by 2100 to occur 44 times per year or almost once per week.” Then the lawsuit tossed out another “fact” — “Oakland is projected to have up to t6 inches of sea level rise by 2100.” This will cause, according to the city’s lawsuit, upwards of $38 billion in damage and take out the city’s wastewater treatment system.”

With that being the case — which aligns up with assertions made by those driving the Armageddon by greenhouse gas scenario whether they are 16 year olds lecturing the world or those ramming it as the main priority for California and/or the country — why are we wasting precious time and resources worried about a little fish?

It is akin to putting in a finger to plug a hole in a dike to hold back the ocean on the belief that will save us all while a tsunami with 2,000 foot waves is barreling down on the coast.

We cannot dismiss what the City of Oakland and others use to argue the perils created by the actions of corporations and such as we have been sold it as an absolute — or at least close to it.

California’s population and wealth are concentrated on the coast in major cities such as San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Due to climate change as spelled out by the seers in the politically correct wing of the environmental movement it is unconscionable that we allow those cities to continue to grow.  

It’s a well-known fact the availability of plenty of relatively inexpensive water is what has fueled the growth of the arid cities on California’s coast for more than 100 years.

We have already sacrificed Owens Valley and much of the ecological systems of other sections of the state by importing water out-of-basin. That has allowed Los Angeles and the rest of the basin as well as San Diego plus the San Francisco Bay Area to grow as big as they are and to jam their freeways with nasty vehicles that consume dinosaurs converted to fuel. Not only has the rest of the state been sacrificed so water can flow out of their taps, fill their swimming pools, and hose down their driveways but also so they can be fed. There was a time when farms near LA and San Francisco took care of most of the population’s food needs. Today there is no way enough food can be grown in the “backyard” of the coastal urban sections of the state to feed the 30 million or so people that live there.

This is why the Department of Water Resources needs to be sued to stop making it possible for the populations of coastal cities in California to grow. They are essentially allowing those jurisdictions to keep drawing people to their sure deaths as if they were lemmings.

State politicians are all abuzz talking about the foolishness of allowing development in extreme areas and his just one PG&E sparked inferno killed 85 people and destroyed 14,000 homes and 6,000 other structures for a $30 billion hit.

Oakland is saying raising sea levels will create 100-year floods every week within 80 years to create up to $38 billion in damage per pop.

Again, why is Gov. Newsom worried about the Longfin Smelt when he’s bought into the argument of the politically correct wing of the environmental movement that upwards of 75 percent of the human population of this state will have either their lives, homes or both threaten by rising seawater levels by 2100?

The answer is for the state to sue itself and start sending less water to urban cities from other water basins. That way we can save the coastal cities, save the Longfin Smelt, and make sure we can feed those on the coast as well. It’s a win-win-win situation.

The state saves Los Angeles from itself, a small fish gets to be awash in plenty of water, and we can make sure all the beautiful people in Hollywood that are the heart and soul of the politically correct wing of the environmental movement have plenty of watercress salads they can wash down with wine.

This column is the opinion of executive editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinion of The Bulletin or Morris Newspaper Corp. of CA.  He can be contacted at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com or 209.249.3519.