Water ‘solution’ to fight California fires is inadequate

A Trump administration executive order framed as a way to help Southern California fight future wildfires won’t get more water in the hands of local firefighters, and will mostly simply divert water to farms, according to experts and advocates in the state. The order, dated on Friday but made public on Sunday, directs a variety of federal agencies to study “Overriding Disastrous California Policies” to “ensure adequate water resources in Southern California.” That potentially includes overriding existing rules governing the Central Valley Project, a federal irrigation network in the state, and the State Water Project, a separate state-run project, and even possibly convening a committee known as the “God Squad” to exempt these changes from the federal Endangered Species Act.

Experts on California’s byzantine water infrastructure said the Trump order has little to do with improving the response to future wildfires like those that have torn through the Los Angeles area in recent weeks. “The premise of this executive order is false,” a spokesperson for California governor Gavin Newsom told Cal Matters. “Attempts to connect water management in Northern California to local wildfire fighting in Los Angeles have zero factual basis. California continues to pump as much water as it did under the (previous) Trump administration’s policies, and water operations to move water south through the Delta have absolutely nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles.”

Even though fire hydrants ran dry and a local aquifer sat empty as LA firefighters fought blazes like the Palisades Fire, experts say that insufficient infrastructure is to blame, rather than a lack of local water supply. Even as the area suffered a months-long dry spell, thanks to a series of wet winters, state reservoirs were mostly above historical averages as the fires broke out. Problems occurred came as LA’s municipal-scale water system, designed to fight smaller, individual house fires, was suddenly tasked with putting out a historically huge wildfire-scale blaze descending on the city.

Moreover, the Central Valley Project doesn’t even connect to the LA water system, let alone would be accessible to firefighters. Seventy-five percent of the system’s water goes straight to agriculture, and the project ends in Bakersfield, before it reaches the Los Angeles area further south. “Do not be fooled by Trump’s lies: none of the policies in this executive order will move even a single drop of extra water to communities devastated by these wildfires. This administration is presenting us with a false choice,” Democratic California Rep. Jared Huffman, who serves on the House Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. Some praised the Trump order, including the Westlands Water District, which serves agricultural communities in Fresno and Kings Counties.

“We appreciate President Trump’s readiness to address these issues head-on and look forward to collaborating with federal and state partners to bring common sense back to the Food Basket of the United States,” Allison Febbo, general manager of Westlands, wrote in a statement. Others saw the move as a sop to agricultural communities in the state, which tend to lean more red than urban areas, and draw an enormous amount of water. “This is a manufactured crisis and water grab for the agricultural sector, who are mainly growing crops for export,” Regina Chichizola of the advocacy group Save California Salmon told The Los Angeles Times.

The executive order also calls for a reversion to a Trump-era set of rules from 2020 governing the Central Valley Project, which draws water from rivers flowing into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and San Francisco Bay and sends them further south to farms and communities in the San Joaquin Valley.

Josh Marcus, The Independent