In California, Trump criticizes Newsom for withholding water. Experts disagree.

President Trump has repeatedly blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom and other California leaders for the fires that devastated Los Angeles. The president charged that state Democrats have stubbornly refused to send enough water to Southern California to fight the fires, which he attributed to their desire to protect the Delta Smelt, a species of endangered fish.

But as Mr. Trump prepared for a visit to California on Friday, water experts in California said his explanations in many cases were wrong or underpinned complex water dynamics. Southern California’s reservoirs were typically full of water early in the year, they noted, and problems in fighting the fire had other causes.

Mr. Trump’s take on the situation could have very real consequences. He threatened Wednesday to withhold federal relief funds if California doesn’t send more of its water from the northern part of the state to its southern half. He also issued an executive order on his first day in office — titled “Putting People on Fish” — that ordered Cabinet members to find ways within 90 days to get more water flowing south.

The Order highlights litigation and disputes as old as California itself who deserves precious water in the state and how its liquid gold can best serve nearly 40 million residents as well as its agricultural industry , its fisheries and its ecosystems.

The mountains along California’s spine – the Sierra Nevada and the southern end of the Cascade Range – are a critical part of the state’s water supply. The same storms that make Yosemite National Park a winter wonderland and create ski playgrounds near Lake Tahoe leave a snowpack that melts into streams and rivers in spring and summer.

While most of the state’s water comes from and is stored in Northern California, most of the state’s population lives in Southern California. And the water-intensive agricultural industry is in the Central Valley, where there is never enough rain to sustain each year’s crops.