There has been such torrent of disturbing stupidity and truly damaging “policy” choices being made that I have honestly been semi-paralyzed as to how to where to start. How about with water in California?
Via Politico: Trump says he opened California’s water. Local officials say he nearly flooded them.
“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!” he said in a poston his social media site.
Local officials had to get the Corps to back down its plan as it would have caused flooding.
While releasing water from reservoirs before a big storm, like the one expected to hit Northern California this weekend, is standard flood-control procedure to avoid overflowing dams, Hernandez said the Army Corps’ Thursday plan would have released far more water than needed. He said releasing the water at the capacity the Corps had planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, where the Corps’ reservoirs are located.
[…]
Hernandez said that after he resisted the decision, Fromm told him the Corps would release the water at a third of the original planned speed, rather than at maximum capacity. Aaron Fukuda, the general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, also confirmed the Army Corps reduced flood releases after local officials pushed back.
And to add a little farce to all of this, the DOGE Dudes showed up.
Officials from his Department of Government Efficiency visited a federal water-pumping station in Northern California on Monday, after which Trump posted on Truth Social that “The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER.” California officials clarified Monday that the federal pumps had been down due to electrical maintenance.
What is the world DOGE has to do with water flow in California is beyond me.
“Something really bad could happen because of their nonsensical approach,” the former official, who was granted anonymity because of the issue’s political sensitivity, said. “Floods are real. This isn’t playing around with a software company.”
Indeed.
Of course, all of this is performative stupidity and has little, if anything, to do with fires in Los Angeles.
Firefighters had almost completely contained the Palisades and Eaton fires as of early Friday. The Army Corps did not respond to a question about how the water would reach Los Angeles, about 200 miles away. Hernandez said the water would go to Tulare Lake, a dry lakebed that last filled up during record-high rainfall in 2023.
Other water experts said it would have been nearly impossible to divert the water to Los Angeles at the speed the Corps originally planned to release it. There is a rarely used state valve that can redirect Tulare Lake floodwaters into the aqueduct that carries water further south into Los Angeles, but neither state nor federal officials responded to a question asking if they would turn it on.
Hernandez said he thinks the current releases are still too much because, he said, the reservoir has enough capacity to absorb any coming storm and would not overflow.
The story does note that draining too much water from the reservoirs could jeopardize irrigation needs later in the year.
More from SJV Water: Trump’s emergency water order responsible for water dump from Tulare County lakes.
Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
First, it would have to be pumped at great expense across the San Joaquin Valley to get to the California Aqueduct and then travel hundreds of miles south.
Second, this isn’t “loose” water free for the taking.
“Every drop belongs to someone,” said Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”
[…]
“A decision to take summer water from local farmers and dump it out of these reservoirs shows a complete lack of understanding of how the system works and sets a very dangerous precedent,” said Dan Vink, a longtime Tulare County water manager and principal partner at Six-33 Solutions, a water and natural resource firm in Visalia.
“This decision was clearly made by someone with no understanding of the system or the impacts that come from knee-jerk political actions.”
Sadly, we are currently being governed in exactly that manner.
The NYT headline sums it up: Trump Officials Release Water in California That Experts Say Will Serve Little Use.
But, of course who needs experts when you have common sense?
The releases, as ordered, have sent water toward low-lying land in the Central Valley, and none of it will reach Southern California, water experts said. Nonetheless, President Trump said on Friday that the same action would have prevented the Los Angeles wildfires on the other side of mountain ranges over which that water has no way of traveling.
[…]
Experts expressed dismay on Friday that releasing so much water now served little use for farmers, who typically have higher irrigation needs in the spring and summer months when agricultural fields are abundant.
By the way: a great way to help grocery prices is to make sure the farms in California have less water than they need during growing season!
And this cannot be stressed enough:
Water supplies from Northern California played no part in the ability of firefighters to combat the flames in Los Angeles County. Hydrants in Pacific Palisades went dry because the municipal water system was not designed to fight so many fires simultaneously. A reservoir that fed the neighborhood was empty because of maintenance issues, not because of a lack of supply to Southern California.
The scope of the disaster was the culprit, not the lack of water supply.
But hey, we are in the Golden Age!
More reading on the water issue.
