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Letter: Growing water demands are going to outstrip supply

Coalition response…Chris Fenstermaker needs to be more careful when he tries to compare one farming region in California with another. Water use on a vineyard in Galt is pretty much the same as it is for the orchards he complains about along I-5. The fact is for 20 years almost 4,000 farms on the San Joaquin Valley’s Westside have faced water supply cuts from 40 percent, to 60 percent to as much as 90 percent by a federal bureaucracy that has dismissed the impacts of its decisions on the people who live and work there. The food-producing capability of the Westside is important to California consumers and to the state’s economy. It provides jobs and economic stability. Perhaps Mr. Fenstermaker should be thinking more about the impacts on society of a large segment of the population being unemployed.