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A Trump administration executive order framed as a way to help Southern California fight future wildfires won’t get more water in the hands of local firefighters, and will mostly simply divert water to farms, according to experts and advocates in the state.
The order, dated Friday but made public Sunday, directs a variety of federal agencies to study “Overriding Disastrous California Policies” to “ensure adequate water resources in Southern California.”
That potentially includes overriding existing rules governing the Central Valley Project, a federal irrigation network in the state, and the State Water Project, a separate state-run project, and even possibly convening a committee known as the “God Squad” to exempt these changes from the federal Endangered Species Act.
Experts on California’s byzantine water infrastructure said the Trump order has little to do with improving the response to future wildfires like those that have torn through the Los Angeles area in recent weeks.
“The premise of this executive order is false,” a spokesperson for California governor Gavin Newsom told Cal Matters.
“Attempts to connect water management in Northern California to local wildfire fighting in Los Angeles have zero factual basis. California continues to pump as much water as it did under the [previous] Trump administration’s policies, and water operations to move water south through the Delta have absolutely nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles.”
Even though fire hydrants ran dry and a local aquifer sat empty as LA firefighters fought blazes like the Palisades Fire, experts say that insufficient infrastructure is to blame, rather than a lack of local water supply.
Even as the area suffered a months-long dry spell, thanks to a series of wet winters, state reservoirs were mostly above historical averages as the fires broke out. Problems occurred came as LA’s municipal-scale water system, designed to fight smaller, individual house fires, was suddenly tasked with putting out a historically huge wildfire-scale blaze descending on the city.
Moreover, the Central Valley Project doesn’t even connect to the LA water system, let alone would be accessible to firefighters. Seventy-five percent of the system’s water goes straight to agriculture, and the project ends in Bakersfield, before it reaches the Los Angeles area further south.
“Do not be fooled by Trump’s lies: none of the policies in this executive order will move even a single drop of extra water to communities devastated by these wildfires. This administration is presenting us with a false choice,” Democratic California Rep. Jared Huffman, who serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement.
Some praised the Trump order, including the Westlands Water District, which serves agricultural communities in Fresno and Kings Counties.
“We appreciate President Trump’s readiness to address these issues head-on and look forward to collaborating with federal and state partners to bring common sense back to the Food Basket of the United States,” Allison Febbo, general manager of Westlands, wrote in a statement.
Others saw the move as a sop to agricultural communities in the state, which tend to lean more red than urban areas, and draw an enormous amount of water.
“This is a manufactured crisis and water grab for the agricultural sector, who are mainly growing crops for export,” Regina Chichizola of the advocacy group Save California Salmon told The Los Angeles Times.
The executive order also calls for a reversion to a Trump-era set of rules from 2020 governing the Central Valley Project, which draws water from rivers flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay and sends them further south to farms and communities in the San Joaquin Valley.
California and environmental agencies later successfully challenged the rules in court, arguing they didn’t protect endangered fish species that rely on Delta water, and the Biden administration worked with the state on new rules which rolled out in December.
Organizations may sue Trump again if his agencies override federal endangered species protections.
During a weekend visit to survey wildfire damage, Trump promised to back the state “100 percent,” though the Republican has also floated putting unrelated political conditions on future wildfire aid to California and abolishing FEMA, leaving states to grapple with their own disaster response.
Speaking at a forum with state officials in Los Angeles, Trump inaccurately described the state’s water system.
“You’re talking about unlimited water coming down from the Pacific Northwest, even coming up from parts of Canada, and it pours down naturally. It has for a million years,” Trump said. “You’ll never run out, you’ll never have shortages and you won’t have things like this, and when you do you’ll have a lot of water to put it out.”
In fact, California water comes largely from melting snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the eastern part of the state, and does not come from Canada or the Pacific Northwest.
In a recent attempt to combat the devastating wildfires in California, President Trump ordered officials to use more water to extinguish the flames. However, this so-called ‘solution’ has come up dry, as officials are now facing backlash and accusations of mismanagement.
Despite Trump’s insistence that more water should be used to fight the fires, experts have pointed out that the state’s water infrastructure is already strained and that using more water could have negative consequences on the environment and agriculture.
Officials have pushed back against the President’s orders, citing the need for a comprehensive and sustainable approach to fighting wildfires in California. They argue that simply throwing more water at the problem is not a viable solution and could do more harm than good in the long run.
As the wildfires continue to rage on, it is clear that a more thoughtful and strategic approach is needed to address this ongoing crisis. Trump’s water ‘solution’ may have come up dry, but it is imperative that officials work together to find a more effective and sustainable way to combat these devastating fires.
Tags:
- Trump administration
- California wildfires
- Water management
- Environmental policy
- Emergency response
- Natural disasters
- Climate change
- Government intervention
- Firefighting efforts
- Political controversy
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