The Endangered Species Act and Agriculture: AStudy of Water Restrictions

The periodic curtailment of water exports from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Bay Delta to protectfish species listed under the Endangered Species Act represents a perennial source of conflictbetween environmental and agricultural interests in Central California. This paper seeks toquantify the relationship between the restriction of water exports and the resulting economiclosses to farmers measured in terms of employment and value of production. Using a difference-in-difference framework to compare the San Joaquin Valley to the neighboring SacramentoValley, this paper finds that there are demonstrable losses to employment but not annual valueproduced. It then makes the inference that these results occur because farmers have the ability tore-optimize crop mixes in response to the amount of available water