Congressman Elton Gallegly (R-Thousand Oaks) blames (the water shortage) on environmental policy and a 2-inch fish called the delta smelt.

On Gallegly’s website “Question of the week” page, the Oct. 2 answer craftily places the blame on those agencies and policies that protect California instead of addressing the underlying issues.

Gallegly states, “There is no reason we should have to watch 3.6 billion gallons of fresh water being pumped into the ocean.”

Fresh water isn’t being “pumped into the ocean”; it flows naturally to the ocean.

Gallegly would have you believe “environmental organizations have consistently blamed the delta water pumps as the main cause for delta smelt decline.”

In fact, the delta smelt decline was so alarming that on “Aug. 31, 2007, California Federal Judge Oliver Wanger of federal district court protected the rare declining fish, delta smelt, by severely curtailing human use water deliveries at San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta from December to June.”

The action of environmental organizations, government agencies and policies, federal district courts and the delta smelt fish, aren’t to blame for California’s (water shortage).

A drought has been years in the making. The majority of California fresh water is and always was for irrigation and human use, but the state’s population has increased many times.

Global climate change, changing rain patterns, low snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and pollution that’s causing global climate change are topics Gallegly should be addressing.

Instead, Gallegly picks his battles well; beating a little fish called the delta smelt was a slam dunk for him.

Smelt or no smelt, the issue will only get worse unless Congress addresses global climate change. Christopher James Grant Ojai