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- During a visit to Los Angeles last week, Trump vowed to increase pumping of water in California.
- Federal data show that pumping actually had lessened for several days last week, apparently to allow for routine maintenance at a federal pumping facility.
- Despite Trump administration claims to the contrary, the amount of water now flowing in the federal system in the Delta is about the same as it was under the Biden administration.
When President Trump visited Los Angeles last week, he pledged to “open up the pumps and valves in the north” and “get that water pouring down here.”
But records show that the day he made that announcement, the federal government’s pumping facility in Northern California was delivering less water than usual, apparently because managers had reduced pumping for several days of routine maintenance.
The records indicate that the day after Trump’s announcement, on Saturday, the federally managed pumping plant resumed regular levels of water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta into the aqueducts of the Central Valley Project.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s daily pumping data for the Jones Pumping Plant shows that on Jan. 21, the amount of water pumped decreased to about 1,900 acre-feet, down from about 6,900 acre-feet the day before. Pumping continued at reduced levels of about 1,800 acre-feet each day from Jan. 22 through Jan. 24, when Trump visited Los Angeles.
The pumping returned to higher levels on Saturday, Jan. 25, delivering 5,300 acre-feet of water that day, or about 1.7 billion gallons.
On Monday night, Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had “entered” California and “TURNED ON THE WATER,” a claim that state officials promptly denied.
The California Department of Water Resources responded in a statement: “The military did not enter California. The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days.”
President Trump heightened his battle with California over water policy by suggesting troops arrived in the state to turn on water pumps — which state officials quickly denied.
Gov. Gavin Newsom responded at a news conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday.
“There were no military sent to the Central Valley. That was reported but wasn’t in evidence,” Newsom said.
He said the federal government was doing maintenance on the Central Valley Project from Jan. 21 to Jan. 24.
“Between the 21st and 24th, the federal government was doing maintenance on their system. It’s maintenance that is well coordinated with the State Water Project that does not end pumping,” Newsom said.
For four days, maintenance work on power transmission lines prevented operation of another pumping plant south of the Delta near San Luis Reservoir, which led managers to reduce pumping at the Jones Pumping Plant.
“On the 24th, that maintenance ended, and they started turning back on the pumps,” Newsom said. “It takes a few days to get the pumps back to 100%, and perhaps that was what they were celebrating.”
The Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the Central Valley Project, did not respond to requests for information about the maintenance that temporarily reduced water deliveries.
The unofficial Department of Government Efficiency, which Trump plans to consult for recommendations on cutting government spending, said in a social media post that it congratulates the administration for “more than doubling the Federally pumped water flowing toward Southern California.”
According to the government data, the Trump administration has not yet increased pumping above the levels that the federal facility was drawing from the Delta under the Biden administration earlier this month. (On Tuesday, the pumping plant delivered nearly 6,900 acre-feet. On Wednesday, that decreased somewhat to about 5,100 acre-feet, and on Thursday, pumping returned to more than 6,800 acre-feet.)
Trump’s order is premised on the idea that increasing Delta pumping would make more water available for the rest of California. But experts say its more complicated than that.
Water experts have pointed out that Trump made several inaccurate statements on social media and during his L.A. visit. For example, he said he was opening up the flow of water “from the Pacific Northwest” and “parts of Canada” — from where California has no aqueducts, pipelines or other avenues for water flow.
He also said he intended to increase the flow of water to Los Angeles, even though urban areas of Southern California are supplied not by the federally managed Central Valley Project but by the State Water Project, the other main north-to-south water conduit in the region — which hasn’t been directly affected by his executive orders.
“I don’t think he’s interested in water. I think he’s interested in other things — for which this is perhaps a rhetorical vehicle,” said Jay Lund, a UC Davis emeritus professor of civil and environmental engineering.
Lund said he thinks one aim of Trump’s statements might be “keeping other people off balance,” including political adversaries in California.
“He likes to occupy space, it seems,” Lund said. “He’s not doing things that would actually provide water. He’s setting up some rhetorical conditions for perhaps other things he’s interested in accomplishing.”
Trump has clashed with Newsom on California water policy and has repeatedly criticized environmental protections for endangered fish species in the Delta, which place constraints on water deliveries.
Trump issued an order on Sunday directing federal agencies to “maximize” water deliveries in California and “override” state policies if necessary.
Lund noted, however, that the movement of water in California is largely controlled by local and regional agencies. Because of state environmental laws and other factors, he said, the president is generally “not in a strong position to greatly alter how California manages water.”
“You’re never quite sure where it’s going to lead to. But he does business by menacing a bit,” Lund said. “My impression of this is, a lot of these things are really more signaling rather than substance.”
If Trump eventually increases federal pumping via the federally controlled Central Valley Project, that would primarily benefit the agriculture industry in the San Joaquin Valley, sending more water flowing to farms that produce almonds, pistachios, tomatoes and other crops. The CVP ends in the southern San Joaquin Valley near Bakersfield and does not reach Southern California’s urban areas to the south.
Lund and other experts have pointed out that because state flow requirements to protect endangered fish will remain in place regardless of any federal changes, an increase in pumping by the federal system could, in theory, lead to a decrease in pumping by the State Water Project and less water flowing to urban Southern California.
“He might be arguing about the share of federal versus state pumping, but I don’t see much promise in being able to increase the total amount of pumping,” Lund said.
President Trump has issued a directive calling for ‘putting people over fish’ in California water policy. State officials say it could prove harmful for water supplies and fish.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the wildfires in Southern California underscored why the state should be delivering more water south from the Delta. But California water managers have said L.A. and other cities are not currently short of water, pointing out that the region’s reservoirs are at record-high levels.
State officials have also said that pumping to move water south from the Delta has nothing to do with the local fire response in Los Angeles.
Even with ample supplies in reservoirs, local water systems were pushed to their limits as the fires rapidly spread, driven by strong winds.
When the L.A. water system lost pressure in parts of Pacific Palisades, some fire hydrants ran dry in high-elevation areas, hindering the firefighting effort. Newsom has ordered an investigation into the loss of pressure to hydrants and the lack of water available from a reservoir in Pacific Palisades that was out of commission for repairs.
In his latest executive order, Trump criticized “disastrous” policies and water “mismanagement” by California, and directed federal agencies to scrap a plan that the Biden administration adopted last month, establishing new rules for operating the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project.
Instead, Trump told federal agencies to more or less follow a plan adopted during his first presidency, which California and environmental groups successfully challenged in court.
Karla Nemeth, director of the California Department of Water Resources, responded to Trump’s order earlier this week saying the directive has no immediate impact on operations of the State Water Project, which supplies water for 27 million people.
Nemeth said the current rules for the operations of the two water systems in the Delta actually supply Californians with more water than they’d have access to under Trump’s 2020 rules, since the latest plan was written based on new science and with added flexibility to “respond more nimbly to real-time conditions” in rivers and the Delta.
“To abandon these new frameworks would harm California water users and protection of native fish species,” Nemeth said.
