Trump is fuming about California water. A federal judge just gave him another reason to vent
President Donald Trump has been an eager fighter in California’s water wars. As a presidential candidate, he vowed to bring more water to San Joaquin Valley farmers during a rally in Fresno. He gave final approval to such a plan in February before a cheering crowd in Bakersfield.
Last week, he even interrupted a discussion with congressional Republicans on the coronavirus pandemic to deliver a fresh tirade on water, blaming the state’s leaders for prioritizing Delta smelt and other endangered species over the rights of humans.
“We throw billions of gallons a day of water into the Pacific Ocean,” he said, sounding incredulous. “So you have a delta smelt that’s not doing well. It’s getting no water, and it will do a lot better if it had water. But they send millions and millions of it — is that seriously — is that the only reason? That’s the reason they send it out there?”
Now the president has another reason to fume about California water policies: A federal judge in Fresno has blocked his administration’s plan to pump more supplies through the Delta. The judge, siding with Gov. Gavin Newsom, ruled the increased pumping would harm the very fish species Trump likes to mock.
The preliminary injunction, issued late Monday by U.S. District Judge Dale Drozd, only runs through May 31 unless it’s extended. But it demonstrates the legal roadblocks state officials can throw in the Trump administration’s way as he tries to overhaul California’s elaborate water system to deliver more supplies to farms and cities south of the Delta.
The ruling will create immediate impacts on water supplies. Farm irrigation districts in the San Joaquin Valley, their supplies already curtailed by a dry winter, will lose an estimated 52,000 acre-feet of water this spring, according to testimony from farm groups. An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons.
The president signed documents finalizing his plan in February during an appearance in Bakersfield in February. “You’re going to be able to farm your land and you’re going to be able to do things you never thought possible,” the president told hundreds of cheering farmers.
“Maybe we can get the governor to come along and really be friendly on this one,” he said.
California heads back to court against Trump
In reality, Newsom’s administration had announced, just minutes before Trump spoke, that it was going to take the White House to court over the water delivery plan.
The state’s lawsuit revolves around age-old arguments about the Delta, the troubled estuary that serves as the hub of California’s water network.
The federal and state governments’ water projects both pull water from the Delta and ship it to their customers — farm irrigation districts and cities in the south state. The water serves 25 million urban residents as far south as San Diego and more than 3 million acres of farmland.
State officials and environmentalists contend that decades of pumping have ravaged the Delta and brought enormous harm to endangered salmon, smelt and steelhead.
The Trump administration’s plan, known as a biological opinion, relaxes environmental restrictions that have been in place since 2009. The administration says the plan introduces flexibility into the system and allows more water to be pumped south without harming the fish.
The judge disagreed. In particular, Drozd ruled that Trump’s plan allows for heavy pumping during springtime — so heavy that river flows are altered and migrating fish are directed toward the giant pumps themselves.
The problem becomes more serious “in a dry year like this one,” Drozd wrote. The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a major source of California’s water supply, is just 37 percent of normal.
This story was originally published May 12, 2020 at 10:19 AM with the headline "Trump is fuming about California water. A federal judge just gave him another reason to vent."