That’s what California’s farmers are saying. USA Today:

FIREBAUGH, Calif. — The road to Todd Allen’s farm wends past irrigation canals filled with the water that California’s hot Central Valley depends on to produce vegetables and fruit for the nation. Yet not a drop will make it to his barren fields.
Three years into a drought that evokes fears of a modern-day dust bowl, Allen and others here say the culprit now isn’t Mother Nature so much as the federal government. Court and regulatory rulings protecting endangered fish have choked the annual flow of water from California’s Sierra mountains down to its people and irrigated fields, compounding a natural dry spell. “This is a regulatory drought, is what it is,” Allen says. “It just doesn’t seem fair.”

And . . .

This drought is in line with conditions two decades ago, says Elissa Lynn, senior meteorologist for theCalifornia Department of Water Resources. But the new federal rulings to protect smelt and salmon have limited water pumping from the Sacramento and San Joaquin River Delta, a vital link between water and its users. Here in the state’s biggest farming region, fingers are pointing at the government, not nature.
“As California standards go, this is not a drought,” says Bill Diedrich, a Firebaugh farmer and director of a water district. “It is the pumping restrictions.”
The federal restrictions arise from environmental suits brought under the Endangered Species Act that argue pulling water out of the delta harms fish. A federal judge in 2007 ordered new biological studies and restrictions on water pumped out of the delta for farmers.

And . . .

Meantime, the roads along this farm area are filled with signs warning that less water means less food. “If you like foreign oil, you’ll love foreign food,” says a sticker on Allen’s truck.
“I wish they’d just put humans first and turn those pumps on,” Allen says.