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Hugh Hewitt on Delta Smelt

Listen to Delta Smelt interviews on Hugh Hewitt Show

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Law professor and radio host Hugh Hewitt (www.hughhewitt.com) recently broadcast all three hours of his nationally syndicated program from Fresno – in order to tell the entire nation about the water crisis in California’s agricultural heartland caused by the federal government’s extremist environmental regulations.

See list of participants in the three segments of the Hewitt program (approximately 35 minutes each) below.

I. First Segment

1. Pastor Jim Franklin, who leads Fresno’s Cornerstone Church and every day sees the human toll caused by the drought.

2. John Harris, a prominent Fresno County farmer and rancher, who describes the background of the water crisis, and the destructive impact that the government-caused drought is having on agriculture and employment.

3. Rob Rivett, president of Pacific Legal Foundation, which is in the lead of the legal fight against the federal government’s Delta smelt regulations that have starved farms, businesses and communities of water.

4. Jim Jasper, a Stanislaus County almond farmer who has lost 90 percent of his water allocation because of the government-caused drought. He says that if things don’t change, his 60-year-old family-run farm cannot survive.

II. Second Segment

1. Alan Autry, former mayor of Fresno, who blasts the federal government for its insensitivity to the tens of thousands of people being hurt by its environmental extremism.

2. Robert Silva, mayor of Mendota, one of the San Joaquin Valley agricultural towns that is suffering staggering unemployment in the wake of the government-caused drought.

3. Phil Larson, a Fresno County supervisor and a farmer, who recites facts and figures on how the water cutbacks are devastating one of America’s – and the world’s – breadbasket regions.

III. Third Segment

1. Mario Santoyo, with the Latino Water Coalition, tells how the government-caused drought is destroying jobs and futures.

2. Tom Birmingham, general manager, Westlands Water District, explains why the feds’ water cutoff is wrong, legally.

3. Shawn Coburn is a family farmer whose future is in doubt because of the feds’ policy of favoring fish over people.

4. Congressman Devin Nunes, from Visalia, tells of his fight to try to get Congress to order the water to be turned back on, and his frustration over the "lock" that extreme environmentalists have over many congressional leaders.

5. "Tarzana Joe" – a regular contributor to the Hewitt show and a poetry afficionado, recites from Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner: "Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink."

This program will stand as a definitive and essential documentary of California's government-caused water crisis. With probing interviews of area farmers, civic leaders, attorneys and policy experts, Hewitt's program provides all the basic "on the ground" facts, along with informed perspective and poignant stories of how the feds' fish-before-people policies are destroying jobs, businesses and people's futures, undermining a key element of California's – and the nation's – economy.