Trump is taking steps to overhaul Delta water supplies to farms and cities

President Donald Trump wasted no time Monday advancing his California water agenda with “presidential action” designed to send more water from the Delta south to millions of Southern California residents and farms in the San Joaquin Valley.

The memo calls on the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior to develop a new plan within 90 days “to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply .”

Titled “Putting People Above Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Secure Water for Southern California,” Trump’s order calls for a 2019 restoration. regulations drawn up by his first administration.

The rules are in place to guide the operation of the federal Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, the two systems that deliver water from Northern California’s rivers to San Joaquin Valley farmers, Southern Californians and other water users in the southern half of the state.

Because both systems harm salmon and other protected fish, the regulations have been hotly contested and debated among federal and state officials, conservationists, farms, tribes and scientists for decades.

Trump apparently wants his agencies to retract the latest version, years in the making, that the Biden administration, with the support of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, announced in December.

Carla Nemeth, director of the state Department of Water Resources, said Trump’s return to earlier rules “has the potential to harm Central Valley farms and Southern California communities that depend on water supplied by the Delta, and will not did nothing to improve the current water supply in the Los Angeles Basin.

She said the rules from the Biden and Newsom administrations are the product of a three-year, labor-intensive process “to balance the needs of tens of millions of Californians, businesses and agriculture while protecting the environment.”

The Biden-Newsom plan is backed by city water districts and many Central Valley farm groups, including the Southern California Metropolitan Water District, State Water Contractors and Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, which represent farmers.

However, Westlands Water District — representing a large agricultural region in the San Joaquin Valley in parts of Kings and Fresno counties — welcomed the president’s message.

“We are grateful to see that the water supply issues facing California are a priority for the Trump administration,” Allison Febbo, the district’s general manager, said in a statement. “We look forward to working with the state and future federal administrations to find a way forward that benefits everyone.”

In his memo, Trump recounted how the Newsom administration, trying to protect endangered fish, “filed a lawsuit to prevent my administration from enacting improvements to California’s water infrastructure.” He wrote that his plan “would have allowed vast amounts of water to flow from snowmelt and stormwater into Northern California rivers for beneficial use in the Central Valley and Southern California. … Today, this vast amount of water flows profusely into the Pacific Ocean.”

But the rules Biden and Newsom negotiated in December will actually sent more water to Southern California than the Trump rules they replaced, according to Ann environmental analysis on the plan.

“I hereby direct the Secretary of Commerce and the Secretary of the Interior … to immediately resume the work of my first administration … to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for the use of the people there, who desperately need a reliable water supply. “

President Donald Trump

Trump’s implication that his plan offers more water to Southern California than Biden’s is one of several inaccuracies that John Rosenfield says make the Jan. 20 memo difficult to interpret.

“It’s not worded with any precision and it builds in a lot of false premises,” said Rosenfield, science director of the environmental group San Francisco Baykeeper. “It shows an incredible lack of understanding of how California water works.”

Restore the Delta, an environmental group based in Stockton, disputed Trump’s claim that river water that ends its journey to the sea is a wasted resource. Instead, the group said it “maintains the West Coast’s largest estuary — a vital resource for California’s economy, recreational and commercial fishing industries, Delta farmers, local businesses and millions of residents who depend on clean, safe water.”

The group Save California Salmon, which represents tribal communities and the fishing industry, said Trump is “implying a water shortage that doesn’t exist.” The group blamed the collapse of the state’s Chinook salmon fishery — which has been shut down since 2023. – on water regulations put in place by the Trump administration five years ago.

Trump’s memo “is not worded with any precision and includes many false premises. This shows an incredible lack of understanding of how California water works.

John Rosenfield, San Francisco Baykeeper

Trump’s memo also cited the wildfires in Southern California as a reason why his “plan should be immediately reimplemented, saying its rules will “provide water that is desperately needed there.”

But Southern California water officials recently said they have a record amount of water in storage. The largest reservoir in the region, Diamond Valley, is almost full and several smaller ones are almost full.

Pacific Palisades City Reservoir is empty for repairs for about a year, but had not dried up for want of water from the delta. Los Angeles gets most of its water from the Owens Valley, the Colorado River, and from groundwater.

While Trump claimed in a Jan. 8 social media post that Delta’s regulations affected firefighters’ ability to battle the devastating Palisades Fire, local authorities rejected the idea. instead Officials of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said the sudden increased demand from fire hoses exceeded the system’s capacity to supply it, causing hydrants to run dry.

“California’s reservoirs are at or above average, including in Southern California, where facilities have enough water to meet needs, including firefighting efforts,” said Nemeth of the state Department of Water Resources.

Trump has repeatedly expressed hostility toward the delta, a small endangered fish, recently deriding it as “useless.” But conservationists say the smelt, which has all but disappeared, is just one casualty of an entire ecosystem, from its mountain springs to San Francisco Bay, that is collapsing. Also in sharp decline are several species of Chinook salmon, steelhead and two species of sturgeon.

Some farmers say they want a fair distribution that provides water for them as well as the environment.

“There’s no question there has to be a balance for both sides,” said Sarah Wolff, a farmer in Fresno and Madera counties, where farmers have long expressed dissatisfaction with rules limiting water supplies. “We continue to have a real supply bottleneck in the Delta that doesn’t benefit the species or the water users and just causes a water supply bottleneck.”

Rosenfield said he believes Trump’s 2019 rules. have violated the Endangered Species Act by causing massive winter Chinook mortality below Shasta Dam three years in a row, plus heavy losses of protected steelhead in the Delta pumps.

Jennifer Pierre, general manager of State Water Contractors — which delivers Delta water to 27 million Californians and 750,000 acres of farmland — pointed out that the longfin smelt is federally listed as an endangered species in 2024. That, she said, would complicate any potential efforts to restore Trump’s 2019 water management rules, known as biological opinions.

“Can you go back to the 2019 rules?” she said. “I’m not sure. We have a new species on the list.