ICYMI: Media Roundup: Trump Seeks to Assert More Control Over California’s Water
President Trump issued a series of executive orders aimed at overriding California’s water policies in response to the Los Angeles fires — setting a dangerous precedent for state management of lands and water.
As CalMatters reports, a broad coalition of tribal, environmental justice, fishing, and water groups from across the state has warned that Trump’s actions “will have devastating consequences for California’s water future, public health, and environmental protections, threatening a federal takeover of California’s right to manage its land and waters.”
The executive orders will only further harm Delta ecosystems, where species like the Chinook salmon, longfin smelt, and Delta smelt are already threatened by reduced water flows. Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, executive director of Restore the Delta, told the Los Angeles Times, “The Delta has been dying a death of a thousand cuts. This will accelerate that death significantly”.
Trump has repeatedly spread misinformation about California’s water issues to justify his executive actions, falsely claiming that the Los Angeles fires could have been avoided by pumping more water from Northern California to the south. However, Governor Newsom’s office has pushed back strongly against these baseless claims.
Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for the governor, pointed out in a New York Times article: “There is no imaginary spigot to magically make water appear at a wildfire, despite what Trump claims. Water operations to move water south through the Delta have nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles. Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.”
In reality, Trump’s actions are a thinly veiled attempt to redirect more water to large agricultural producers in the Central Valley.
As Bruce Reznik, executive director of Los Angeles Waterkeeper, told the Los Angeles Times, “Every American should be clear about what the president is doing here. In a time of extreme crisis and tragedy, he is using this emergency to line the pockets of his wealthy benefactors — in this case, industrial agricultural producers in the San Joaquin Valley — at the expense of the rest of us.”
Tom Philp highlights in the Fresno Bee how Trump’s executive order in relation to the Central Valley Project is simply a ploy “to increase water supplies from a Northern California project that doesn’t even serve the city [of Los Angeles]”. In capitalizing on the devastating wildfires, Trump’s actions threaten the health of the four million residents in the Bay-Delta region, California’s fishery economies, Tribes, and water users in Southern California.
News Roundup:
- Trump orders more Central Valley water deliveries — claiming it would help LA fires. CalMatters.
- Trump reenters California’s water wars. It’s unclear who will win. The Los Angeles Times
- Trump Seeks to Assert More Control Over California’s Water. The New York Times.
- Visiting L.A. after firestorm, Trump focuses on overhauling California water policy. The Los Angeles Times.
- The fatal flaw in Donald Trump’s order to send more water to fire-ravaged Los Angeles. The Fresno Bee.
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