President Trump directed U.S. government agencies to override California’s water policies as needed — slamming the state’s handling of the Los Angeles region’s wildfires in an executive order this weekend.
“Firefighters were unable to fight the blaze due to dry hydrants, empty reservoirs, and inadequate water infrastructure,” the order stated. “It is in the Nation’s interest to ensure that California has what it needs to prevent and fight these fires and others in the future.”
Writing that “it is the policy of the United States to provide Southern California with necessary water resources,” the order directed federal officials to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries.”
The order follows comments made by Trump on Friday prior to visiting Los Angeles, at which time he said he would condition federal wildfire assistance on both voter identification mandates and a release of more water from Northern California statewide.
Trump has repeatedly argued that California officials could have boosted water flow to Los Angeles from the northern part of the state simply by pumping more of the resource.
Earlier this month, he went so far as to call on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) to resign, while also accusing him of failing to sign a declaration that would have “allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”
Newsom’s office was quick to decry the accusations as “pure fiction,” noting that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration” and that Newsom “is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”
Water experts have backed up the state’s assertions, stressing that California’s supply issues are not as cut and dry as Trump has described them — and that fire hydrants briefly stopped working due to acute demand issues.
Trump was presumably referring to a proposal he issued during his first administration that sought to redirect water from Northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (the “Bay-Delta”) to the agriculture-rich Central Valley. California officials ended up filing suit against the federal government, disputing the order on the grounds that more pumping would harm fish protected by the Endangered Species Act.
Yet in reality, Los Angeles actually gets much of its water elsewhere, with about 38 percent of drinking water in 2023 — the most recent year with data available — coming from the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The aqueduct transports water from the Owens River Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada to the city, rather than from the northern Bay-Delta.
Another 9 percent of the city’s drinking supply came from local groundwater and 2 percent from recycled wastewater, while 51 percent was imported from the adjacent Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Just 30 percent of the Metropolitan District’s water originates in the northern part of the state, while 20 percent comes from the Colorado River and 50 percent form a mix of other resources.
Nonetheless, Trump’s executive order includes a section entitled “Overriding Disastrous California Policies,” requiring several department heads to “expeditiously take all measures, consistent with all applicable authorities, to ensure adequate water resources in Southern California.”
The document also calls upon the federal Bureau of Reclamation to “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.”
In response to Trump’s order, Tara Gallegos, a spokesperson for Newsom, told Reuters that “Trump is either unaware of how water is stored in California or is deliberately misleading the public.”
“There is no imaginary spigot to magically make water appear at a wildfire, despite what Trump claims,” Gallegos added.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, issued a statement blasting the Trump administration for “scapegoating endangered salmon and smelt” in a way that has “nothing to do with the L.A. wildfires.”
“It’s sickening to see this pointless attack on California’s water management,” Suckling said. “And it’s disgusting that Trump is still threatening to hold desperately relief funds hostage.”
