As unemployment lines grow longer and rural communities suffer under the economic hardships of the regulatory drought, we can feel better knowing that today's National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biological opinion includes whales among the species protected by reduced Central Valley water deliveries.

That's right, I said whales.

It's no surprise that folks are headed to court over the riff between DWR and private landowners reluctant to grant the Department access for peripheral canal survey work. DWR sought permission to conduct surveys on private property as part of the planning process to decide if and where a new canal would be built to carry water from the Sacramento River to export pumps near Tracy.  About half of the landowners have granted permission to enter their property.

It's no secret that the Delta is broken and needs to be fixed. Separating export water from endangered fish is the logical answer to a huge problem with the state's water supply.  Many believe Delta landowner concerns over water supply andwater quality can be resolved but a lot of Delta residents do not.

Here's a big part of the problem:  The only ones suffering so far are south of Delta water users because of export restrictions designed to protect fish.  The fish populations continue to decline and millions of acre-feet of water flow out to the ocean, leaving huge swaths of San Joaquin Valley farmland unplanted because there isn't enough water.

One columnist representing fishermen this week likened Governor Schwarzenegger and DWR Director Lester Snow to Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, calling the Governor's explanation of the water supply shortage "The Big Lie.

That kind of talk won't help. 

If interested parties are headed to court this early in the process I expect the road to fixing California's water supply system to be along and unpleasant one.  That's too bad.

DWR announced today that they are increasing State Water Project allotments from 15 percent to 20 percent thanks in part to recent storms.  This is good news for the 25 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland that depend on the State Water Project for water supplies.  But the drought isn't over.

In its statement, DWR acknowledged that while statewide rainfall totals are near normal for the year, Lake Oroville still remains 34 percent below normal.  In addition, runoff projections for the state are just 64 percent of normal, the third below average year in a row.

What to expect 

The crowd that typically opposes Delta water exports will claim that this is further proof that California does not need to react to the current water supply situation with new project ideas, such as a canal to move water around the Delta or surface storage projects.  But that isn't what DWR's announcement today means.  The fact remains that hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland that depend on SWP and CVP water will go without those deliveries this year and as many as 80,000 farm-related jobs will be lost due to man-made water supply cutbacks and drought.  You are going to hear more rationale that California's water supply is fine.

Don't be fooled. 

Water supply reliability has been changing and MWD decided that it needed that reliability for its larger share of customers.  The program will end on January 1, 2013.