The more it rains, the more water we lose.

It sounds crazy, but that's what these federal restrictions on our water supplies mean for us in California.

For the past three years, we have all been suffering the effects of a prolonged drought. But these restrictions on water deliveries have made the effects of the drought much worse.

Here in the San Joaquin Valley, we've experienced drought conditions far worse than this year and still received 30 percent of our water supplies. This year, we are expecting zero percent.

The storms that have moved across California these past few weeks should be providing relief. But the federal rules won't allow the state water pumps to run fully. Water that we could be storing to irrigate the fields and provide the thousands of farm jobs that have been lost in the communities here is instead running out into the ocean.

But that's not the hardest part for the people who live here to understand. The hardest part is that there is no evidence that fish are benefiting from these pumping restrictions. Ever since 1992, when the Central Valley Project Improvement Act became law, the federal government has been restricting the movement of water through the delta to serve the 25 million people who depend upon those supplies. And throughout all of that time, the fish populations have steadily declined.

Fifteen years and more of failure ought to be enough to convince these agencies that what they're doing doesn't work. Instead, they just keep making things worse.

Here in the San Joaquin Valley, those federal rules mean that thousands of people have lost their jobs. People are losing their homes and their businesses. Hundreds of thousands of acres that used to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for families throughout the United States are now lying fallow.

We used to be called the food basket of the world. Today, the local food banks can barely keep up with the needs of the thousands of families that can no longer provide even the most basic necessities.

Many of my neighbors and I have invested in miles and miles of water-efficient drip irrigation - just to see those investments go to waste because there isn't any water. Others worked for years to develop permanent crops that many environmentalists once said was the right thing to do; today, they're ripping out the orchards that cost millions to grow because there isn't any water to sustain them.

I grow cantaloupes. I have invested in developing organically grown cantaloupes. That requires a lot of expenditures to prepare the land properly and to support the labor-intensive cultivation that organic produce requires.

But because of these water shortages, I have had to farm less and lay off workers who have been with me for years because there isn't enough water to keep people in their jobs.