Because of the endangered fly, construction of the needed hospital was delayed for several years. Taxpayers picked up the tab. Worse, the federal government's anxiety over the eight flies also cost the region 20,000 prospective jobs. A large industrial development planned for nearby has been stalled indefinitely, along with the 20,000 jobs it was expected to create over the next 15 years. In 1995, feds told the Yuba County Water District it couldn't restore 30 miles of levees along the Yuba and Feather Rivers in because 43 elderberry bushes had grown up around the original levies.
Elderberry bushes are food for the endangered Valley Longhorn Elderberry Beetles.
Before the levees could be repaired, the county had to build an 80-acre mitigation site, which included a large pond. The pond seeped in the nearby levee. Not one of the endangered beetles that might dine on the bush has even been seen in the area. All of that cost and suffering resulted because bureaucrats, acting under the ESA, wanted to save shrubs on which the bug might feed should the bug ever be in that part of Yuba County. The flies and beetles remain endangered.