In California Fires, Trump Blames 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 has charged that the state’s Democrats have stubbornly refused to send enough water to Southern California to fight fires, which he attributed to their desire to protect the delta smelt, a threatened species of fish.But as Mr.Trump prepared a Friday visit to California, water experts in California said that his explanations in many cases were wrong or glossed over complex water dynamics.
Southern California reservoirs were generally full of water at the start of the year, they noted, and problems in the fight against the fire had other causes.Mr.Trump’s view of the situation could have very real consequences.
He threatened on Wednesday to withhold federal relief funds if California does not 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 Over Fish” — that directed cabinet members to find ways within 90 days to reroute more water southward.The order brings to the fore litigation and disputes as old as California itself around who deserves precious water in the state and how its liquid gold can best serve nearly 40 million residents along with its agricultural industry, fisheries and ecosystems.The mountains along the spine of California — the Sierra Nevada and southern end of the Cascade Range — are an essential piece 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 by spring and summer.While most of the state’s water originates and gets stored in Northern California, most of the state’s population lives in Southern California.And the water-intensive agricultural industry sits in the Central Valley, where rain is never enough to sustain each yea...