The administration of President Donald Trump has followed through on his promises to “turn on the water” in California, but the state’s residents might not be benefiting as much as he’d hoped.
As reported by Politico, the Army Corps of Engineers released water from two reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada — the Corps opened Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Success Lake — though there wasn’t much warning ahead of time.
“Local water managers on the Kaweah and Tule rivers had to move equipment and alert farms about possible flooding with only an hour’s notice, said Victor Hernandez, the Kaweah River Water Master,” the outlet reported, adding that Hernandez called the situation “alarming and scary.”
The Corps said the water was released due to Trump’s executive order related to the California wildfires, though the two major blazes are now 100% contained.
And not only is that water not needed to fight Southern California wildfires, but its absence could hurt California farmers.
“We need to keep every bit that we have, because this potentially is irrigation water that we have up there,” Hernandez told Politico.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has directed state officials to better collect and store rainwater from this winter’s storms, but Trump argued on X, formerly Twitter, that the release of the “beautiful water flow” would have prevented these disasters in the first place.
“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons,” he said on Friday. “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!”
