After the fires, Trump calls for a redesign of Californian water policy

During a visit Friday in the burned areas of Los Angeles, President Trump sought to convince Californian officials that the state water management system needed a radical overhaul.

Trump announced that he was about to approve a decree “to open pumps and valves in the north”.

“We want this water to flow here as quickly as possible, hundreds of millions of gallons of water flow in southern California, and this will be a great benefit for you,” he declared during a rally of cities, counties and municipalities. State officials at barracks 69 of the Los Angeles fire service in Pacific Palisades.

“We must have this water. You talk about unlimited water, “said Trump. “You will never miss, you will never have a shortage, and you will not have things like this, and when you do it, you will have a lot of water to turn it off.”

Experts said Trump’s statements were trying to link fire to fire and local water supply to How water is managed in Northern California were inaccurate. Water managers and researchers have said that the cities in southern California are currently not lacking in water and that the region’s tanks are up to the task. record high levels After abundant deliveries of supplies in 2023 and 2024.

Earlier this week, Trump made an order To place “people before fish”, ordering federal agencies to resume work to “send more water” from the Sacramento-San River Delta to other parts of the State “so that people there -Bas may desperately need a reliable water supply ”.

Trump also said that he wanted to link federal aid to recovery after forest fires or not by California of changes in his water policy.

Governor Gavin Newsom, who briefly met Trump at Los Angeles International Airport, said A change in water management in northern California would not have affected the response to fires. Governor’s office said on social networks This week, that California “pumps as much water now as it could in the context of the previous policies of the Trump era” and that “there is no shortage of water in the south of the California ”.

Even with sufficient reserves in reservoirs, local water supply systems were pushed to their limits while fires spread quickly, pushed by strong winds.

When the Los Angeles County Water System loss of pressure In some parts of Pacific Palisades, certain fire mouths dried up in high altitude areasEntering fire fighting efforts. Newsom last week ordered an investigation on the loss of pressure of water in the fire mouths and the lack of water available in a pacific palisades tank which was Out of service for repair.

“There was a lot of water available in southern California when these fires broke out,” said Bruce Reznik, executive director of the Los Angeles Waterkeper environment. “The solutions proposed by the President to improve water safety in our region are unsuitable and based on a poor understanding of the state water supply system. »»

During a visit to North Carolina earlier Friday, Trump said that he intended to discover “why they do not release water”.

Trump also tried to modify Californian regulations and policies in terms of water during his first mandate. But when his administration Rules adopted in terms of water Who weaken environmental protection in the Delta, the State and the conservation groups successfully challenged these changes to the courts.

This paved the way for the Biden administration, in collaboration with the Newsom administration, to develop the current plan and the supporting biological opinions, which determine the quantity of water that can be pumped and the way in which the flows of the rivers are managed in the delta.

The rules govern the operation of the dams, aqueducts and pumping factories of the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, two of the largest water supply systems in the world, which supply millions of agricultural land and approximately 30 million people.

Pumping intended to supply farms and cities has contributed to the ecological degradation of the Delta, where fish species listed as threatened or endangered include rainbow trout, two types of Chinook salmon, the hawk , the spur of the delta and the green sturgeon.

Trump said that he intended to seek to weaken the protections for the hawk of the delta, a species of the length of a finger which has undergone an important decline and which is considered to be endangered. extinction in the wild.

“They talk about the Delta spur,” said Trump. “There is no need to protect it. The Californian people must be protected.

The American representative Vince Fong (R-Bakersfield) thanked Trump for his positions, saying that “it is essential to ensure a reliable and stable water supply”.

Fong said that Trump’s decree “would have a big impact”.

Trump said the changes would benefit Californian agriculture, saying that the agricultural land of the Central Valley have been deprived because “they send water to the Pacific Ocean”.

Trump seeks to modify the Californian water policy at a time when Newsom pursues major hydraulic infrastructure projects, including a plan of $ 20 billion for build a water tunnel under the delta, and a plan for Build a reservoir of sites In Northern California, the first new major state of the state for decades.

Trump did not discuss these projects during his visit.

Karla Nemeth, director of the California Water Resources Department, said Trump’s projects could succeed. harm the water supply of farms and communities as well as the populations of threatened fish.

Environmental defenders claim that Trump’s orders could prove to be disastrous for salmon and other fish species, as well as for the deterioration of the Delta ecosystem.

Reznik said that instead of the approach adopted by Trump, the federal government could help the Los Angeles region by providing more investments to improve the resilience of its local water systems.

“More money spent for wastewater recycling, rainwater capture, cleaning and conservation of groundwater would prepare us for the future,” said Reznik. “Sending more water to agriculture in the central valley will not be enough. »»

Reznik and other criticisms said that the changes wanted by Trump would threaten the endangered fish and the deterioration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Ecosystem.

Pump more water from the Delta via the Valley central project managed by the federal government would mainly benefit agriculture in the San Joaquin valley, where Trump benefits from one of his strongest support in the state.

“Each American should be clear about what the president is doing here,” said Reznik. “In a period of extreme crisis and tragedy, he uses this emergency to fill the pockets with his rich benefactors – in this case, the industrial agricultural producers of the San Joaquin valley – at the expense of the rest of us.”