While President Donald Trump issued a wave of long -term decrees during his first week in his post, one of the relatively specialized issues received an inconsistent share of the president’s anger and attention: the water policy in California. This may be logical if the treatments he follows may help in STEM Fatal fires Like those who have killed at least 29 people in the Los Angeles region in recent weeks. In fact, the president claimed that “firefighters were unable to fight the fire due to dry taps, empty tanks and infrastructure of insufficient water.”
Unfortunately, for future firefighters, the only apparent goal for the new president’s policies is to deliver more water to farmers hundreds of miles away from the state’s firefighting areas.
On his first day as president, Trump issued an executive order that directed the Ministry of Interior to “direct more water to the southern part of the state. After that, on Sunday, another order issued the administration’s order to” overcome “the state administration immediately in its waters, even if that means California’s law is canceled. Trump can block federal wildfires If the state fails to comply with his consent.
But new measures will not provide more water to Los Angeles at all. Instead, his attempt to relax on water restrictions will transport more water to large farms in the central valley of the state, a long -term pet issue for the president, who tried a similar maneuver during his first term. This time it will go further, it suggests the rules of endangered species and clarify the state’s policy to achieve a victory The influential farmers who support all its three campaigns.
None of this has any relationship of forest fires in Los Angeles. For one reason, the city does not suffer from a shortage of water. It was a fierce wind, and the power of the hurricane was the one that gathered the fires of the depths and Iton-and not a lack of water to contain the fire. While some local water tanks in the Pacific Palisades were running out of water, it was only because the city was unable to pump new supplies until the Helside neighborhood is quickly enough to keep pace with the high demand during the fire, and not because of its presence because there is because there is because there is because enough of the water Available to send there.
Even if Los Angeles He was In low water, Trump’s executive orders will not help in this, because the federal government channel system does not actually provide any water to the Los Angeles region. More than 90 percent of that water goes to the farmer in the center of the valley, where the rest goes to the distant cities around San Francisco and Sacramento. All this water is already speaking, and during dry years, the government cannot even fulfill all its current decades. What you can do most is to reduce the environmental rules that limit some pumping, which farmers have long opposed.
But even some of the farm defenders question the full range of Trump’s latest, and his deceptive relationship with fire.
“I always appreciate the attempts to create more flexibility to transport water throughout the state, however [federal] Alex Perring, chief politics defender at the California Office Federation of the farm, a leading agricultural lobby in the state, said the water largely reaches agricultural contractors. “I don’t think any amount of additional water coming from the federal project will be able to implement this fire. It is an attempt to connect water supply to a natural disaster, but those links are not actually present.”
Meanwhile, the environmental groups criticized Trump’s attempt by the strong water policy in California, saying that his latest matter would be destroyed by weak fish species in the state – and the integrity of federal endangered species works as a whole.
“It is not possible to get to know anything that anyone knows anything about California Water,” said John Rosfield, director of science at San Francisco by Bay, who is not profitable in Golden State. “It is not from this planet.
California’s water system was a hot political debate for decades. Throughout the twentieth century, the federal government and California built a complex series of dams and channels designed to transport water from the northern parts of the state, which see precipitation and snow melting, to the center of agriculture, Valley and the Capital Los Angeles region. The federal government runs dams, channels and pumping stations that drive water south through the valley, then run the channel that extends to Los Angeles. The system provides water for about 30 million California population and irrigates about 4 million acres of the most productive agricultural land in the country.
The essence of this transportation system is Sacramento Saint -Joquin Delta, a sensitive swamp area where two of the largest rivers of the state and flow to San Francisco Bay. This area is also the point where endangered fish species such as salmon from Xinuk from the Pacific Ocean and swims toward the source to spark. If federal pumps and government pumps move a lot of water outside the delta for farms and cities, they are the opposite of current flows, and the withdrawal of fish towards predators or absorbing them in pumps. This is a violation of the Law of Endangered Species. One of these types of weak fish, gray 2 -inch bait fish known as the The The Delta is especially sensitive to these current changes, and the government often limits their pumping to protect them.
Monday night, Trump Say a mistake In fact, in fact, he had the army “operating water … flowing abundantly from the northwest of the Pacific Ocean, and beyond” by activating the pumps, which was in a non -contact mode for a few days of maintenance. The huge water does not come from the northwest of the Pacific Ocean, and because the federal government already controls and uses the pumps all the time, such a procedure does not require the army’s participation.
Photography by David Swanson / AFP via Getty Images
It is California’s government channel system that already provides water to Los Angeles and many other cities in southern California-and the federal government has no jurisdiction over this. The state government limits these water deliveries to some extent during the dry years to maintain strong supplies, and rarely provides all the water required by each city. However, the delivery of Los Angeles was typical last year, and the state’s tank levels are higher than average. (Moreover, the Los Angeles Metro gets a greater share of its water from other sources, such as the Colorado River and the Owens Valley.)
Despite his upbringing on the eastern coast, Donald Trump has focused on Central Valley’s water issues for years. David Bernhardt, who pressed the influential Westlands District area, chose to lead the Ministry of Interior during his first administration. He also hosted multiple marches in the region during his 2020 campaign, during which he often extended water policy. During his appearance on the Podcast Joe Rogan last year, Trump led the then -host candidate through the water around the water, describing the dried agricultural lands he saw while traveling across the region with members of the Central Valley in Congress years ago.
He said: “We are driving, and I have not seen it before.” “I said, do you have dryness? They said,” No … in order to protect a small small fish, the water is directed to the Pacific Ocean. “So I see this, and I said,” You must joke. “
During his first term, Trump has formulated new rules in an attempt to accelerate the water delivery operations of the SacRamento-San Joaquin Delta. These rules have suggested that pumping should be limited only when the chic friendly water water is special. After Joe Biden Trump succeeded in office, the Democratic President amended these rules in a joint effort with California – and many environmental groups criticized Biden’s bases as worse for fish than Trump.
Trump may go further. Another executive order calls for another wholesale rewriting to the pumping rules, and proposes to build new dams throughout the state, and even indicate that his administration can announce that the extinction fly is functional. It is also suggested that the federal committee known colloquially as “God’s Band”, a group of heads of agencies that can grant exemptions to the Law of Endangered Species. This only happened several times since the law entered into force, but in theory, the “God Squad” can allow the government to pump more water to the farms, even if that means exposing the presence of the smell or salmon at risk – or drying the delta.
Some of the most powerful water areas in California, which are usually run by large agricultural land owners, praised the executive matter, although it did not follow Trump in connecting them to fires. For example, the Westlands Wateer District, which covers more than half a million acres on the western side of the central valley, said in a “welcome” Trump’s leadership “Trump’s leadership in treating barriers that prevent the delivery of water.”
But despite the possibility of the White House actions, it is clear that any of these changes will pass, at least in the short term. California Water is one of the largest most largely paid issues in the United States, and even small amendments to the state pumping system are likely to raise legal challenges.
“They can try a lot of these things,” said Perling, California’s farm attorney. “It is only about: How many times do you want to prosecute?”
