In abstract
Trump apparently desires to override new Biden-Newsom guidelines which have widespread assist amongst Southern California cities and a few Central Valley farmers.
President Donald Trump misplaced no time Monday in advancing his agenda for California’s water provide with a “presidential action” meant to ship extra Delta water south to thousands and thousands of Southern Californians and San Joaquin Valley farms.
The memo calls on the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of the Inside to develop a brand new plan inside 90 days “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.”
Entitled “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California,” Trump’s order requires reinstating 2019 rules drafted by his first administration.
At stake are the principles that information operation of the federal Central Valley Undertaking and State Water Undertaking, the 2 techniques that ship water from Northern California rivers to San Joaquin Valley farmers, Southern California residents and different water customers within the southern half of the state.
As a result of the 2 techniques hurt salmon and different protected fish, the rules have been extremely contentious and debated amongst federal and state officers, environmentalists, farm teams, tribes and scientists for many years.
Trump apparently is asking his businesses to override the newest model, years within the making, that the Biden administration, with the assist of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, introduced in December.
Karla Nemeth, director of the state Division of Water Assets, mentioned returning to the sooner Trump guidelines “has the potential to harm Central Valley farms and Southern California communities that depend upon water delivered from the Delta, and it will do nothing to improve current water supplies in the Los Angeles basin.”
She mentioned the principles from the Biden and Newsom administrations are the product of a three-year, labor-intensive course of “to balance the needs of tens of millions of Californians, businesses, and agriculture while protecting the environment.”
The Biden-Newsom plan is supported by city water districts and plenty of Central Valley agriculture teams, together with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the State Water Contractors and the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, which represents farmers.
Nevertheless, the Westlands Water District — representing a big San Joaquin Valley farming area in components of Kings and Fresno counties — welcomed the President’s message.
“We are grateful to see that the water supply issues facing California are a priority of the Trump Administration,” Allison Febbo, the district’s normal supervisor, mentioned in an announcement. “We look forward to working with the State and incoming Federal administrations to find a path forward that benefits all.”
Trump in his memo recounts how the Newsom administration, trying to guard endangered fish, “filed a lawsuit to stop my Administration from implementing improvements to California’s water infrastructure.” He wrote that his plan “would have allowed enormous amounts of water to flow from the snow melt and rainwater in rivers in Northern California to beneficial use in the Central Valley and Southern California. … Today, this enormous water supply flows wastefully into the Pacific Ocean.”
However the guidelines that Biden and Newsom agreed upon in December would truly ship extra water to Southern California than the Trump guidelines that they changed, in line with an environmental evaluation of the plan.
“I hereby direct the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Inside…to right away restart the work from my first Administration…to route extra water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to different components of the state to be used by the individuals there who desperately want a dependable water provide. “
President Donald Trump
Trump’s implication that his plan provided extra water to Southern California than Biden’s is considered one of a number of inaccuracies that Jon Rosenfield mentioned make the Jan. 20 memo troublesome to interpret.
“It’s not worded with any precision and it embeds a lot of false premises,” mentioned Rosenfield, the science director with the environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper. “It shows an incredible lack of understanding of how California water works.”
Restore the Delta, an environmental group based mostly in Stockton, challenged Trump’s assertion that river water that completes its seaward journey is a wasted useful resource. As a substitute, the group mentioned, it “sustains the largest estuary on the West Coast — a vital resource for California’s economy, recreational and commercial fishing industries, Delta farmers, local businesses and millions of residents who depend on clean, safe water.”
The group Save California Salmon, which represents tribal communities and the fishing trade, mentioned Trump “suggests a water scarcity that does not exist.” The group blamed the collapse of the state’s Chinook salmon fishery – which has been shut down since 2023 — on water rules that the Trump administration carried out 5 years in the past.
The Trump memo “is not worded with any precision and it embeds a lot of false premises. It shows an incredible lack of understanding of how California water works.”
Jon Rosenfield, San Francisco Baykeeper
Trump’s memo additionally invoked the wildfires in Southern California as a cause why his “plan must immediately be reimplemented, saying his rules would “provide water desperately needed there.”
However Southern California water officers just lately mentioned they’ve a document quantity of water in storage. The area’s largest reservoir, Diamond Valley, is virtually full as are a number of smaller ones.
A metropolis reservoir in Pacific Palisades has been empty for restores for a couple of 12 months, however it was not dry as a result of lack of water from the Delta. Los Angeles receives most of its water from the Owens Valley, the Colorado River and from groundwater.
Whereas Trump claimed in a Jan. 8 social media put up that Delta rules had affected firefighters’ capacity to battle the devastating Palisades Hearth, native officers rejected the notion. As a substitute, Los Angeles Division of Water and Energy officers mentioned the sudden elevated demand from hearth hoses exceeded the capability of the system to ship it, inflicting hydrants to run dry.
“California’s reservoirs are at or above average including in Southern California where facilities have enough water to meet demands including firefighting efforts,” mentioned Nemeth of the state water sources division.
Trump has repeatedly expressed hostility towards the Delta smelt, a small endangered fish, just lately ridiculing it as “worthless.” However conservationists say the smelt, which is sort of extinct, is only one casualty of a complete ecosystem, from its mountain headwaters to San Francisco Bay, that’s collapsing. Additionally in steep decline are a number of runs of Chinook salmon, steelhead and two sturgeon species.
Some farmers say they need a good allocation that provides water to them in addition to the setting.
“There’s no question there needs to be a balance for both sides,” mentioned Sarah Woolf, a farmer in Fresno and Madera counties, the place farmers have lengthy voiced dissatisfaction with guidelines limiting water deliveries. “We continue to have a real supply bottleneck in the Delta that hasn’t benefited species or the water users and just causes gridlock in delivering water.”
Rosenfield mentioned he thinks that the 2019 Trump guidelines violated the Endangered Species Act as a result of they led to huge mortality of winter-run Chinook beneath Shasta Dam three years in a row, plus heavy losses of protected steelhead at Delta pumps.
Jennifer Pierre, normal supervisor of the State Water Contractors — which relays Delta water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland — identified that longfin smelt was federally listed as an endangered species in 2024. This, she mentioned, would complicate any potential efforts to revive Trump’s 2019 water administration guidelines, often known as organic opinions.
“Can you go back to the 2019 rules?” she mentioned. “I’m not sure. We’ve got a new species listed.”
