And yes Westlands gets water through SWP but it is the Federal government that Westlands is asking to remedy the drainage issue.

Next time sign your name instead of wearing an Intafa mask.

You claim it was Westlands WD that impacted/drained the Tulare Basin. That is hog wash. Westlands is on no way connected physically or politically with Tulare Lake and the hydrologic basins of the two are neither the same nor connected. Finally the Tulare Are area today receives water from the State Water Project, not the Federal Central Valley Project.

I am a now retired water resources engineer with a 35 year career working with and for water agencies in the San Joaquin Valley including 13 years at Wesltands.
The next time you post on Calwatchdog or anywhere else you should do some fact checking on yourself. And Calwatechdog should monitor your posts as well

Moreover, the recent “drought” was not a drought at all but a structural water shortage (as documented by the Bureau of Reclamation “Water Supply and Yield Study (2008) that reported California was running a 4.5 million acre-foot water deficit per year way before the 2012 to 2016 drought). California is running water deficits like it runs budget deficits.

As for Westlands Water District, the Tulare Basin once was an intermittent inland lake that was so big it nearly bisected California in two. It was a big water bog. Westlands turned it into agricultural production and in so doing solved a big environmental blight. Think Salton Sea relocated to Kern County and what a morass that would be. Westlands didn’t create that morass but alleviated it. So it may be that the Federal government should be responsible for drainage which could be used to recharge the Tulare Basin if wetlands were used as filters. I thought environmentalists liked wetlands? Certainly, Westlands has no jurisdiction over the lands receiving the drainage water; and it is Federal water after all. That sort of has a jingoistic rhyme to it: Westlands for wetlands.

Cultural value issues masquerade as objective science. We could let the Tulare Basin revert back to nature resulting in the largest toxic dump and mosquito breeding grounds in the state. That is one cultural value. Or we could continue to let Westlands use the land for agricultural production that generates taxes and eliminates the largest environmental hazards by virtue of doing so. That is another cultural value. The question is what do we value, not what “science says”, which is nothing but obfuscation for crass politics.