Trump issues new California water order as wildfires continue to burn: What to know
President Donald Trump signed a wide-ranging executive order Sunday demanding federal and state officials deliver more water and other resources to southern California to help fight wildfires – even if it means clashing with area leaders.
Trump for weeks has criticized California officials over their handling of the latest wildfire blazes, which have killed at least 28 people and burned more than 35,000 acres.
"Firefighters were unable to fight the massive wildfires due to dry hydrants, empty reservoirs, and inadequate water infrastructure," the president wrote in an order earlier this month. Some hydrants in Los Angeles area ran dry during the height of the wildfires, but local officials say that's because they were not designed to deal with major disasters.
But what would Trump's order actually do? It directs the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a national agency, to deliver more water through the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, canals and other infrastructure. And his administration said the delivery should come even if it conflicts with state or local laws.
That's not the only time Trump called for overriding ongoing efforts in the California. The order calls on the interior and commerce secretaries to zero in on "activities that unduly burden efforts" to move water around the state.
Trump's order also directs the White House to see whether it can attach conditions on federal aid to California to ensure cooperation. The president has repeatedly threatened to withhold relief if it doesn't reroute water to southern areas.
California has arguably the nation's most complex water systems, Fresno State University political science professor Tom Holyoke, who specializes in western water policy, told Paste BN last week.
Los Angeles gets its water primarily from the Los Angeles River, Owens Valley in eastern California and the Colorado River terminating from the Rocky Mountains, Holyoke said.
This is the president's second water-related executive order and another attempt to mandate water from northern California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, one of the state's main water sources, to be redirected south.
Last week, Trump issued another order meant to change the environmental protections surrounding the smelt, a three-inch-long fish once vital to California's ecosystem but now on the Endangered Species List.
The latest directive also came two days after the president toured the destruction in Los Angeles. The area's two largest wildfires, the Palisades Fire in Pacific Palisades and the Eaton Fire near Pasadena have now reached at least 90% containment.
During a roundtable meeting with L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and other officials afterward, Trump said Friday he didn't know how "devastating" the fires were until he saw for himself.
"I didn't realize. I saw a lot of bad things on television, but the extent of it, the size of it. We flew over it," Trump said of the fire damage. "It is devastation. It's incredible. It's really an incineration."
Trump clashed with Bass on local management and whether residents, including those living in Pacific Palisades and Altadena, can return to what's left of their homes.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has also repeatedly hit back at Trump's criticism during the disaster.
"Maybe the president doesn’t know that there’s not a spigot that can be turned to solve all the water problems that he alleges exist, that don’t exist when it comes to the state water system here in California," he told reporters last week.
The lack of measurable rain, hurricane-force winds, low humidity, and vegetation made for the “unfortunate perfect firestorm,” said Char Miller, an author and environmental analysis professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. “It was simply too overpowering.”
“They could’ve had five times the resources that night, personnel and technical," Miller said. "But nothing, and I mean nothing, could have been done to stop that fire.”
Much-needed rain helped firefighters make gains on several blazes in Southern California on Monday as flooding shuttered schools, triggered landslides and prompted road closures.
With help from the rain, containment has increased for the Palisades and Eaton fires as well as the Hughes Fire, north of Santa Clarita, and the Border Fire 2 in San Diego County.
Contributing: Christopher Cann, Paste BN; Reuters