Expert describes Trump-ordered Northern California water release as "dumb"
After the tragic wildfires in Southern California, President Trump often attributed the disaster to what he said was a lack of water being sent from the northern part of the state, and vowed to fix the problem.
On Friday, he posted an announcement showing a photo of a flowing river, calling it the "beautiful water flow that I just opened in California."
By executive order, he directed the Army Corps of Engineers to open the floodgates at two dams on reservoirs in Tulare County.
In a statement from Washington D.C., the Corps wrote, "Consistent with the Executive Order...the US Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires."
But there are a few problems with that.
"Apparently, Mr. Trump felt that that was going to help Southern California," said water strategist Barry Nelson. "Number one, those rivers aren't connected to Southern California. That water will not get to Southern California. Number two, that's water that the Corps was holding for farmers to irrigate with next summer. Releasing it now, when it's raining doesn't do anybody good, except it creates the very real risk of potential flooding."
Nelson has his own reasons for being angry about this. He is policy consultant for the Golden State Salmon Association, whose members have not been able to fish for the last two years because of the shockingly low numbers of Chinook salmon still remaining in the wild.
"California salmon are right now at one of the most disastrous points they've been at, certainly in human history," said Nelson. "We've now gone to a point where many of our most important salmon runs are on the brink of extinction."
Fishermen say the salmon need larger flows in rivers during dry months to survive. And though they're frequently competing with Central Valley agriculture for water, this time, the farmers are also unhappy about the water releases.
"The agriculture community looks at it and says, 'What is going on here?' That is water that was being held in storage for farmers to grow stuff next summer," said Nelson. "Releasing water now only does one thing: puts people at risk from flooding."
Nelson is concerned that this waste of billions of gallons of water will be an indication of the kind of resource management the country can expect for the next four years.
"California has the most complex plumbing system on the planet," he said. "It's not a simple thing to operate. And if you think it's simple, and order people to make what look like simple decisions to you, you wind up making really dumb decisions."
In his announcement, President Trump said more than five billion gallons of water would be released within three days of opening up the dams. Nelson said he believes that people within the Army Corps of Engineers must know that releasing water now is pointless. But as a branch of the U.S. military, he thinks they were simply following orders from their Commander in Chief.
"What's interesting here is that this experience with this just dumb release of water -- that didn't benefit anybody and threatened public safety -- shows that expertise actually matters when you're running big complicated systems," said Nelson. "We'll see if anyone in Washington D.C. is listening to that lesson."