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WASHINGTON — After the Washington Post revealed late last week that the Army Corps of Engineers knew that releasing water from two California reservoirs at President Donald Trump’s direction in January was unlikely to reach the southern part of the state, Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., is demanding answers from the Pentagon and the Department of Interior for what he calls the “politically motivated, uncoordinated, unscheduled, and opaque water releases” in the Central Valley between Jan. 31 and Feb. 2.
“We fear that these releases were conducted to placate the President’s vow to ‘open up the valves’ to bring more water to Los Angeles to combat the devastating wildfires—which had already been 100% contained by that point,” Levin wrote in his letter Tuesday.
In the wake of the California wildfires in January, Trump continued to falsely claim that the state’s fish conservation efforts in the northern part of the state were responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. And back in September, Trump made the threat to withhold federal wildfire aid if elected unless California Gov. Gavin Newsom agreed to divert more water to farmers inland rather than allowing it to flow out to sea.
Just days into his second term, Trump signed an executive order that directed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum and the Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries” to the Central Valley. The order cited the Los Angeles fires, despite the fact that roughly 75% of Central Valley Project water is used for agriculture.
A few days later, the Army Corps of Engineers “turned on the water,” as Trump requested on his Truth Social platform. According to Politico, Victor Hernandez, the Kaweah River water master, only had an hour’s notice to get equipment moved and alert farmers of the possibility of flooding.
“I’ve been here 25 years, and I’ve never been given notice that quick,” Hernandez told the outlet at the time. “That was alarming and scary.”
Democrats have been quick to point out the release of water will likely impact farmers who rely on water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success during the dry season. Rep. Ted Lieu told reporters last month the water is “largely going to evaporate when farmers don’t need it. And so Republican Congressman David Valadao is going to have an answer to his farmers when in the summer months they need water and they don’t have enough.”
Valadao, who represents a swing district, pushed back on Lieu’s comments in an interview with Spectrum News a few days later.
“The amount of water that the Democrats were really focused on is a minimal amount of water, and a lot of that went into storage — and when I say ‘storage,’ I say ‘underground storage,’” said Rep. David Valado, R-Calif., whose district is in the Central Valley, last month. “So even his comments are out of line with the actual situation. I would actually invite him to come to the district. I’d love to show him around and educate him and other Democrats on what the actual situation is there.”
“Had we built more storage, we would be in a much better situation. But the main points of what the president was trying to do, I completely support, and the farmers in my district support. And that is to get those pumps turned on,” continued Valadao, who pointed out there is a “tiny bit of infrastructure” that can actually make the connection between the Central Valley and Southern California.
But Levin states in his letter “that doing so would have required several steps of coordination with local, state, and federal agencies to bring the water through a rarely used connection point.”
“Despite knowing how much coordination would have been necessary to actually deliver the water to Southern California, the Corps failed to conduct the necessary outreach to other agencies with enough advance warning to actually make the releases successful in achieving the purported purpose,” he wrote.
Levin asks Hegseth and Burgum, who specifically gave the order to release the water, for “the Department of Government Efficiency’s involvement in these efforts, if any.” The letter also asks for details on the steps taken to “coordinate the release of water with state and local government officials, local water managers, agricultural stakeholders, and public safety officials,” what the objectives the water release is supposed to achieve, and water future water releases look like.
The letter gives the secretaries 10 days to respond.
