California is awash with water after years of drought, but farmers aren’t getting what they need because of endangered smelt and steelhead in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

It’s a situation that has played out before, but California must reconsider its priorities before an important center of agricultural production is lost forever.

The California farmer is an endangered species.

We read with interest a report over the weekend by our colleagues at the Wall Street Journal. Reporter Jim Carlson writes that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and state water officials are curtailing water deliveries to farmers in Southern California.

“Illustrating how broken California’s vast water-delivery system is, many farmers in Central Valley, America’s fruit and vegetable basket, will get just 40% of the federal water they are supposed to this year.”

California has the most elaborate water conveyance systems in the United States. The State Water Project and the federal Central Valley Project collect water through a series of reservoirs in the relatively wet northern part of the state, and sends it down the Sacramento River.

The linchpin in the system is the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, where California’s two biggest rivers meet before draining into the Pacific Ocean. Water from the Delta is pumped into aqueducts and down the San Joaquin Valley to arid Southern California.

It’s an elegant system when it’s allowed to work as designed, which it is not. Environmentalists have filed numerous lawsuits alleging the system’s pumps harm the tiny Delta smelt, and that drawing down water in the Delta harms other endangered fish.

Federal court rulings, changing state policies and continuing drought have kept farmers from getting their full allocations for years. This year, despite record rain and snowfalls, just 40% will be delivered.

Thousands of acres will go fallow as a result.

The Journal reports the impacts. Farmers are producing less, so there are fewer farmworkers working the fields. With fewer crops, processors are shutting down lines or going out of business altogether. Less money is flowing through rural communities, impacting nonfarm businesses.

We have long believed that endangered species deserve protection. We have never believed, however, that efforts to preserve those species should come without consideration of their impact on essential human activities.

The need for a bit of balance should be obvious to those who believe the law should treat all parties fairly. Balance is essential for those at risk of losing their livelihood or the use of their property.

Americans are at risk of losing a crucial food supply. The California farmer is endangered, and must be saved.