President Donald Trump wasted little time in his second term restarting California’s water wars.
Monday, mere hours after taking his oath, Trump issued a memorandum calling on the Interior and Commerce Departments to restore water management policies that boosted water supplies for the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California.
The backstory: In 2020, Trump signed off on new biological opinions governing the coordinated operations of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project, the two major water arteries running through the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta that feed the Central Valley and Southern California.
- The Trump-era rules eliminated a rigid schedule to pump water south in an effort to avoid endangering fish species in the Delta and gave water managers with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the autonomy to engage in real-time monitoring of Delta conditions to direct pumping water to Valley communities.
- Shortly after Trump signed the rules, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state of California sued the Federal government to halt enforcement of the water management plan. They also tightened water flow along the State Water Project.
- Former President Biden’s administration initiated new biological opinions in the hopes of reverting back to the environmental rules that governed during the Obama administration. Those rules were issued and finalized in late December.
The big picture: The memorandum from Trump to the secretaries of the Interior (which oversees the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) and Commerce (which oversees the National Marine Fisheries Service) directs them to “immediately restart the work from my first Administration… to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people who desperately need a reliable water supply.”
What he’s saying: Trump’s memorandum underscored on-going tensions with the State of California, particularly as Southern California continues to burn.
- “During my first term, the state of California, at the direction of its Governor, filed a lawsuit to stop my Administration from implementing improvements to California’s water infrastructure,” Trump wrote. “My Administration’s plan would have allowed enormous amounts of water to flow from the snow melt and rainwater in rivers in Northern California to beneficial use in the Central Valley and Southern California. This catastrophic halt was allegedly in protection of the Delta smelt and other species of fish. Today, this enormous water supply flows wastefully into the Pacific Ocean.”
- “The recent deadly and historically destructive wildfires in Southern California underscore why the State of California needs a reliable water supply and sound vegetation management practices in order to provide water desperately needed there, and why this plan must immediately be reimplemented.”