A July article in Bloomberg View with the intriguing title of “Don’t Blame Fish for California’s Water Shortage,” provides some much needed context and background for the fish versus farmers debate. The author points out for example, that some water  flows out to keep salt water from intruding and contaminating water that is pumped south. And “…most of what agricultural interests point to as environmental use of water consists of flows down three mostly free-running Northern California coastal rivers that are separated from the Central Valley by mountain ranges — and thus not readily available for valley farmers in any case.” It is worth reading the whole article that can be accessed at BloombergView