Why the water Trump ordered released in California won’t help Los Angeles firefighting

Following the deadly wildfires in Los Angeles in January, President Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release billions of gallons of water from two reservoirs in California’s Central Valley, more than 100 miles away from the fire zones.

Mr. Trump had claimed that California withheld water supplies that could have made a difference in fighting the flames. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other officials disputed those claims.

Now, the water released from dams at Lake Kaweah and Lake Success is rushing into a dry lakebed in the Central Valley, where experts say it can’t flow to Southern California and will likely go to waste.

“There is absolutely no connection between this water and the water needed for firefighting in L.A.,” said Peter Gleick, a climate and hydrology expert. “There’s no physical connection. There’s no way to move the water from where it is to the Los Angeles basin.”

Gleick, who co-founded the Pacific Institute, a research center in Oakland, says the move ignores the reality of water management in California.

“The farmers in the basin own the water and that water is stored in these dams in the winter, during the rainy season, so that farmers can use it in the very hot, long, dry summer season,” he explained. 

From the perspective of the farmers, he said, the water is “assumed to be lost.”

California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, said the release of the water also presented a risk of flooding.

“I think even the water managers got only a short bit of notice to say, ‘Please don’t. You can’t do that. That’s way too much water,'” he said. “And frankly, had they not talked the Army Corps off the ledge, there would’ve been serious flooding. It would have been an even bigger problem.”

Schiff criticized Mr. Trump’s order as “stupid and ridiculous and dangerous and wasteful.”

“We’re gonna need people to speak publicly about the harm this is doing,” Schiff said. “This is a waste of precious water. We just don’t have the water to waste.”