Water rights have been one of the most controversial issues in the western sector of our nation for decades, but up until the Spring of 2001, most living in that part of the country paid very little attention to this liquid that is so essential to life flowing off the high mountain peaks.

Due to the lack of snow fall in the higher elevations surrounding the Klamath Basin in central Oregon, water levels in Klamath Lake were extremely low. Environmentalist, Tribal Indian groups in the basin and along the Klamath River and it's tributaries, and many involved in the fishing industries along the coastlines of the Pacific filed a lawsuit to preserve water flows in the river that would accommodate fishery habitat and fishery migrations to the ocean. The legal actions filed by these groups was embraced by the Endangered Species Act (EPA) passed in 1978, which has a tendency to place the welfare of fishery, wildlife and plant life over welfare concerns of our nation's citizens.

Federal courts ruled that the water would be dispersed in the sole interests of accommodating the needs of the fisheries, resulting in ordering federal regulators to shut off irrigation water to several hundred growers in the Basin. The aftermath of the devastating effects of the courts decisions not only forced many landholders and businesses in the area into bankruptcy, but also had long reaching negative  effects in the local and state economies.

Eight years later, the EPA was the instigating force in another lawsuit that reeked devastation in one of the most fertile agriculture areas of the world - the San Joaquin Valley.  Federal agents shut down the pumping of water to more than a million acres of farmland and 25 million Californians in the Spring of 2009. Once again, the fishing industry and environmentalists found a species to accommodate the needs for their agenda - the Delta Smelt. This minnow, that will fit in the palm of a hand, was getting caught in irrigation pumps and because of it's endangered status (under the guidelines of the EPA), farm lands became nothing more than an arid desert, resulting in the devastation of a thriving local economy and loss of an abundance of marketable produce throughout the nation.

A recent ruling by U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wagner made a landmark decision earlier this month that cripples the concept that the welfare of the species and plant life supersedes that of mankind. The justice ruled that federal water officials must consider humans along with fish when water resources are divvied up in sufficing the needs of fisheries and the needs of the agriculture industries. Justice Wagner directed the federal government to use only precise scientific studies (not human or computer estimates or predictions) to determine the exact impact reduced water would have on fish populations.