Trump Declares War on California Environment and Water Management
How Will Governor Newsom Respond? And When?
By Gary Bobker and Ron Stork
When President Trump hit the ground running in late January with a slate of executive orders and other measures, no one was surprised to see federal environmental protections, services, and agencies strongly targeted. But his explicit linkage of federal disaster relief to radical changes in California water policy stood out even in the fire hydrant fountain of proposed actions. And Governor Newsom’s response – or lack of one – has also stood out.
Even before his inauguration, the president-elect had the Golden State in his sights, tweeting on January 8 that “Governor Gavin Newscum (sic)” was to blame for the Los Angeles wildfires because “he wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt” by cutting off water to Southern California and as a result there was “no water for fire hydrants.” None of which is true. Protections for endangered species like smelt, salmon, steelhead, and sturgeon represent a small fraction (1% for smelt, as an annual average) of total Central Valley flows, water storage in Southern California was at the highest level ever, according to local water managers, and fire hydrants are not designed to deal with the firefighting needs associated with massive wildfires.
On his first day in office, the president issued an executive order titled “Putting People Over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California”, directing federal agencies “to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply” and blaming the Newsom Administration for blocking Trump’s 2019 rewrite of the Endangered Species Act permits for the federal Central Valley Project (CVP). Ironically, export pumping from the Delta has been greater under Governor Newsom than was allowed under the Trump Administration version. Not to mention the inconvenient fact that the CVP – the largest water project in the state – delivers water within the Central Valley, not to Southern California. More about this later.
On January 24, President Trump visited the Los Angeles area, and repeated his assertions, and added this surreal description of where California’s water comes from:
But we have a lotta water that is available…You’re talking about unlimited water coming up from the Pacific Northwest, even coming up from parts of Canada. And it pours down naturally, it has for a million years, for a million years, it pours down, you’ll never run out, you’ll never have shortages…
You know you don’t even need reservoirs with the water coming down. You don’t need the reservoir. You have so much water, you don’t need it. You only have the reservoirs because you tried to hold the water. But you have natural water coming down, along the coast. It’s, for a million years it’s been coming. You know that, right?
Actually, no. Although his argument against reservoirs directly contradicts the relentless push by some water users and his own administration to build expensive, unnecessary, and environmental harmful dams and gave river advocates a much-needed laugh.
On January 24, 2025, Governor Newsom met with President Trump to discuss relief efforts for victims of the LA wildfires.
In an executive order dated the same day (but released several days later), the president directed federal agencies to take actions to (emphasis added):
“provide Southern California with necessary water resources, notwithstanding actively harmful State or local policies”
“immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries”
“operate the CVP to deliver more water and produce additional hydropower, including by increasing storage and conveyance, and jointly operating federal and state facilities, to high-need communities, notwithstanding any contrary State or local laws”
“shall take all available measures to ensure that State agencies — including the California Department of Water Resources — do not interfere with the Bureau of Reclamation’s operation of the project to maximize water delivery to high-need communities or otherwise”
“identify any regulatory hurdles that unduly burden each respective water project, identify any recent changes in state or Federal law that may impact such projects from a regulatory perspective (including Public Law 118-5), and shall develop a proposed plan, for review by the Secretaries, to appropriately suspend, revise, or rescind any regulations or procedures that unduly burden such projects”
In short, the Trump administration is proposing to override existing federal, state, and local laws and to essentially federalize state water management in order to maximize deliveries from both the federal CVP and the State Water Project and to fast track new dams – including an expanded Shasta Dam (see accompanying article) – all to provide more water to corporate agribusiness in the Central Valley, which will be the primary beneficiary of these actions, at the expense of protections for water quality, healthy rivers, viable fisheries, and all of us who depend on them.
It didn’t take long for federal agencies to act on President Trump’s executive orders. The operators of two Army Corps of Engineers dams on the Kaweah and Tule Rivers in the southern San Joaquin Valley - or their superiors in the Trump administration – decided to open the release valves. According to the L.A. Times:
Responding to questions about the reasons for the sudden increase in water flow [in the Kaweah and Tule Rivers], Gene Pawlik, a spokesperson at the Corps’ headquarters in Washington, said in an email that the action was “consistent with the direction” in a Trump’s recent executive order to enact “emergency measures to provide water resources” in California.
Pawlik said the Army Corps was releasing water from the dams “to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires.”
What President Trump and the water operators didn’t know or didn’t care about is that:
water released from these federal dams didn’t actually reach Southern California (that takes special circumstances and pre-planning)
the Corp doesn’t actually hold the rights to the released water that was released
the irrigation districts that actually hold the water rights were taken by surprise and upset over the loss of stored water supply they planned to use during the summer irrigation season, and
the volume of water released could have broken river levees, placing downstream communities at risk.
An aerial view of Success Dam on the Tule River, one of two federal dams that released water per President Trump’s order. It has a capacity of 82,000 acre-feet and is 156 feet tall. January 27, 2016. Credit: Kelly M. Grow, CA Dept. of Water Resources.
In other words, the Trump Administration’s solution to what it claims are catastrophic state policies was to release water from federal dams that didn’t belong to them, endangered downstream communities, reduced water supplies, and could not help with the Los Angeles wildfires. Nice job, fellas.
Where has Governor Newsom been during all this chaos? Unlike his efforts, in conjunction with other state officials and the legislature, to fight back against the Trump Administration’s policies on immigration, reproductive health, and other issues, the governor has been silent on defending California’s environmental laws and ability to manage its own water resources. Indeed, exactly one week later Governor Newsom issued his own executive order that:
directed state agencies to “maximize diversions of excess flows that become available as a result of … anticipated winter storms”
suspended requirements that local and regional agencies have a local flood plan in place or otherwise addressed flood risk before being allowed to pump excess flows
directed state agencies “to identify any obstacles that would hinder efforts to maximize diversions to storage of excess flows that become available as a result of the anticipated winter storms, to remove or minimize such obstacles wherever possible, and to promptly report to my office any additional statutory or regulatory barriers that should be considered for suspension”
Sound familiar? Rumors abound that the Newsom and Trump administrations may be negotiating a deal over how the federal and state projects are operated that accommodates the president’s directives. We hope they’re idle rumors…
Friends of the River has been working to educate decision-makers and the media about President Trump’s inaccurate statements about California water (another example here), Governor Newsom’s decision to imitate the Trump approach, and the need for state action to defend California laws and policies.
It comes as no surprise that President Trump’s executive orders on California water are based on false assumptions about how the state’s water is managed and false assertions about the effect of environmental protections on water supply. But his attempt to force unwelcome and radical policies on California as the price of approving federal disaster relief for the victims of the Los Angeles wildfires is truly beyond the pale. Disaster victims should not have to beg for assistance or agree to betray their values in order to receive it.
It's time for Governor Newsom to make it clear that he intends to defend the values of Californians and indeed all Americans who demand clean water, healthy rivers, and viable fisheries, and who expect compassion for the victims of catastrophic events like the Los Angeles wildfires.
