Current Events > under Trump's orders, two California dams were opened

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President Donald Trump declared victory on Friday in his long-running water war with California, boasting he sent billions of gallons south but local officials say they narrowly prevented him from possibly flooding farms.

Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. 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! he said in a post on his social media site.

Local officials had to talk the Army Corps of Engineers down after it abruptly alerted them Thursday afternoon it was about to increase flows from two reservoirs to maximum capacity a move the agency said was in response to Trump directing the federal government to maximize water supplies.

Before the Corps ratcheted down its plan, local authorities scrambled to move equipment and warn farms about possible flooding, said Victor Hernandez, who oversees water management on one of the rivers, the Kaweah in Tulare County. He said the Corps gave him one hour notice on Thursday.

Ive been here 25 years, and Ive never been given notice that quick, Hernandez said. That was alarming and scary.

The incident is the latest chapter in an ongoing feud between Trump and state authorities that has been turbo-charged by the Los Angeles fires, which the president has used to reignite long-running complaints about water management that had nothing to do with the response to the disaster.

An Army Corps spokesperson tied the releases to Trumps executive order on Sunday directing all federal agencies to maximize water deliveries in order to respond to the fires that started in Los Angeles earlier this month.

Consistent with the direction in the Executive Order on Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in California, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Success Lake to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires, Gene Pawlik said in a statement.

While releasing water from reservoirs before a big storm, like the one expected to hit Northern California this weekend, is standard flood-control procedure to avoid overflowing dams, Hernandez said the Army Corps Thursday plan would have released far more water than needed. He said releasing the water at the capacity the Corps had planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, where the Corps reservoirs are located.

Channel capacity is very dangerous, Hernandez said. People dont understand that [with] channel capacity, youre going to have flood damage down below.

Trump since his first term and during his presidential campaigns has repeatedly vowed to send more water to Central Valley farmers in the states conservative heartland. He incorrectly blamed the temporary lack of water in Los Angeles hydrants during wildfires earlier this month on the states water management policies, though the states reservoirs are at or near historic levels right now and the hydrants went dry because of the high local demand. Hes also threatened to withhold disaster aid unless California goes along with his moves to deliver more water.

Officials from his Department of Government Efficiency visited a federal water-pumping station in Northern California on Monday, after which Trump posted on Truth Social that The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER. California officials clarified Monday that the federal pumps had been down due to electrical maintenance.

But a former senior Bureau of Reclamation official said moves like the one in Tulare County could endanger property and lives. Reclamation is the primary federal agency with authority over delivering water in the West, while the Army Corps is largely responsible for flood control.

Something really bad could happen because of their nonsensical approach, the former official, who was granted anonymity because of the issues political sensitivity, said. Floods are real. This isnt playing around with a software company.

Rick Brown, the public affairs officer for the Army Corps of Engineers in Sacramento, said Friday the two reservoirs had hit water levels high enough on Thursday to trigger standard flood control releases.

He referred further questions about the decision to maximize water releases to Army Corps headquarters.

Hernandez said he was told by Jenny Fromm, the Army Corps chief water manager in Sacramento, that the decision came from somewhere above. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on whether it ordered the releases.

Hernandez said that after he resisted the decision, Fromm told him the Corps would release the water at a third of the original planned speed, rather than at maximum capacity. Aaron Fukuda, the general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, also confirmed the Army Corps reduced flood releases after local officials pushed back.

Firefighters had almost completely contained the Palisades and Eaton fires as of early Friday. The Army Corps did not respond to a question about how the water would reach Los Angeles, about 200 miles away. Hernandez said the water would go to Tulare Lake, a dry lakebed that last filled up during record-high rainfall in 2023.

Other water experts said it would have been nearly impossible to divert the water to Los Angeles at the speed the Corps originally planned to release it. There is a rarely used state valve that can redirect Tulare Lake floodwaters into the aqueduct that carries water further south into Los Angeles, but neither state nor federal officials responded to a question asking if they would turn it on.

Hernandez said he thinks the current releases are still too much because, he said, the reservoir has enough capacity to absorb any coming storm and would not overflow.

Dumping the water from Lake Kaweah and Success Lake poses a flood risk to downstream communities, he said, like the town of Porterville, which nearly flooded during rainstorms in 2023. It also reduces the amount of irrigation water available to farmers during the driest months of the year. The snowpack in the Southern Sierra Nevada that California depends on for water supplies in the summer has dipped to 47 percent of average for this time of year after a dry January, according to state estimates released Friday.

We need to keep every bit that we have, because this potentially is irrigation water that we have up there, Hernandez said.

He said he and board members at his water district had called on members of Congress to intervene, including Democratic Rep. Jim Costa and Republican Reps. David Valadao and Vince Fong. None responded to requests for comment.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla sent Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, whose Defense Department oversees the Army Corps, a letter on Friday night asking him who directed the releases, how the water would be transported to Los Angeles, how much notice was given and what the impact would be on local communities.

Unscheduled water releases require close coordination with local officials and safety personnel, as well as downstream agricultural water users, in order to reduce flood risks to communities and farms, wrote Padilla. Based on the urgent concerns I have heard from my constituents, as well as recent reporting, it appears that gravely insufficient notification was given, recklessly endangering residents downstream.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/31/trump-california-water-00201909

Take that libs!

Gonna be a rough summer for farmers in Cali due to Trump.

Dark_twisted posted...

Gonna be a rough decade everywhere on planet Earth due to Trump.

Fixed

Trump ordered something that was reckless and stupid for nothing other than his own political gain? Wow, someone bring me my fainting couch before I topple in surprise.

Officials from his Department of Government Efficiency visited a federal water-pumping station in Northern California on Monday, after which Trump...

Of course Elon's cockroaches were involved with it somehow.

What will they do if he orders nukes on hurricanes.

Notti posted...

What will they do if he orders nukes on hurricanes.

Next 4 years is the most likely time we'll see a nuke fly. Always thought Kim Jong Un was the most likely, but it's fucking America of all countries.

UnfairRepresent posted...

Fixed

Its going to be far longer than a decade.

Every day is a new nightmare.

He probably thinks it's like in The Two Towers where the Ents break the damn and it puts out all the fires.

He's basically ordered dumping a metric fuck load of water into the ocean in an arid region that needs that reservoir for food production in the summer.

Yeah, that sounds like Mango Mussolini alright.

Its all good. Who needs food grown in Cali when tariffs will make those foods much cheaper to import? /s because idiots actually say this stuff seriously.

bump

LightHawKnight posted...

Its going to be far longer than a decade.

Try as long as forever

If Trump really wanted to help solve the water problem in California, he'd find a way to stop Nestl (the water company) from draining millions of gallons a year from California aquifers.

Republicans never think more than a week ahead.

I'm very curious how he thinks water works. He assumingly believes he's helping the situation somehow.

...Y'know, once you can mentally detach yourself from the real-world consequences of his actions, Trump's presidency is the most chaotically hilarious "reality" show, ever.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

What's really generous is to assume Republicans think at all. They don't. Everything is extremely primitive with them, like "steal what I want" and "destroy anything that upsets me".

I feel he did this on purpose just to hurt the state at this point...

Is the goal just to hurt California over the next couple years?

DarkChozoGhost posted...

Is the goal just to hurt California over the next couple years?

Yes, it is his goal.

In 2016 there were enough competent people in the Trump administration to prevent his dumbest ideas from being implemented. Now there are only sycophants and yes men who will do everything he asks no matter how dumb it is.

We could have avoided this.

creativerealms posted...

We could have avoided this.

A sizable portion of the voter base only learns via pain to their face.

No problem, we'll simply import our food from Mexico!