California wildfires: Water supply becomes flashpoint in Trump-Newsom fight

The flames burning in the Los Angeles region are not only devastating property and lives, but also fueling political arguments over how to fight the fires, with President-elect Trump blaming state officials for a lack of available water supplies.

A social media brawl began Wednesday after the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s (LADPW) efforts to fill three 1-million-gallon storage tanks left some Pacific Palisades hydrants high and dry. Extreme water demandhad overcomethe rate at which higher altitude tanks could be replenished, according to LADPW.

Shortly after, Trump took to Truth Social, blaming the insufficient supply on Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), whom he accused of blocking efforts to pump more water from Northern California to the Los Angeles region.

But experts maintain that moving more water in this way would be impractical from an infrastructure perspective, as well as completely unnecessary.

“Would it have made any significant difference in terms of what we’re experiencing now with these wildfires and the damage they’re creating?” asked Kurt Schwabe, professor of environmental economics and policy at the University of California Riverside.

“I would say no,” he told The Hill, noting that reservoirs across the state are currently in good shape. “There’s this level of dryness in Southern California, but you’re not going to water every forest.”

Trump on Wednesday nightrequestedNewsomto resignfollowing oneprevious postin which hethe governor snappedfor failing to sign a statement that would have “allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and melting northern snow, to flow daily into many parts of California, including areas currently burning in near-apocalyptic fashion “.

The governor’s office quicklyhe censuredthe accusations as “pure fiction,” writing on the social platform X that “there is no such thing as a water restoration statement” and that Newsom is “focused on protecting people, not doing politics and making sure that firefighters have all the resources they have. need.”

Trump was likely referring to water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the “Bay-Delta“), which supplies drinking water to nearly 27 million residents through the State Water Project, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

But the city of Los Angeles gets much of its water elsewhere, with approx38 percentof drinking water in 2023, the most recent year for which data is available, from the Los Angeles Aqueduct, according to LADPW. Theaqueductit carries water from the Owens River Valley in the eastern Sierra Nevada to the city, rather than from the Bay Delta in northern California.

Another 9 percent of the city’s drinking water in 2023 came from local groundwater and 2 percent from recycled wastewater, while 51 percent was imported from the Southern Metropolitan Water District California only30 percentof Metropolitan’s water originates in the Northern Sierra, as 20% comes from the Colorado River and 50% is a mix of other resources.

Wednesday night, Newsomannouncedthat the state was mobilizing up to 140 water tankers to help fight the Eaton and Palisades fires. The 2,500-gallon vessels were joining about 23 already ashore, according to his office.

In the same announcement, his team noted that “the state began closely monitoring this weather event over the weekend and began prepositioning resources on Sunday.” The governor, his office added, is in constant contact with local, state and federal leaders, including President Biden.

Earlier in the day, Bidenhad approvedNewsom’s request for a Presidential Major Disaster Declaration, which made federal assistance available to increase emergency response costs.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, addressed the issue of preparedness in a webinar the same day, noting that “there was a lot of prepositioning of resources, which probably saved lives.” .

“This event scared people as much as a week before it happened in terms of the weather forecasting world,” he said. “In fact, it’s possible that just because of those dire prognoses things weren’t even worse.”

“I’m pretty sure there are people who are alive right now, who wouldn’t be alive if they didn’t have these prepositioned resources,” Swain added.

However, Trump followed throughadditional criticismThursday morning denouncing the “gross incompetence of Gavin Newscum and Karen Bass,” referring to the Los Angeles mayor, while adding that “Biden’s FEMA has no money, it’s all wasted on the Green New Scam!”

The Federal Emergency Management Authority (FEMA) has authorized the use of federal funds to help California fightmultiple firesin the Los Angeles area, and he said yesmaking assistance availableto the people affected by the fires.

As for pumping more water from north to south, UC Riverside’s Schwabe stressed that doing so would have had “virtually no impact on what we’re experiencing now.”

Instead, Schwabe described the ongoing crisis as “a local preparedness issue,” in the sense that cities must take into account the “changing climate regime” in planning and future allocation of resources.

For example, he suggested that instead of relying on just three tanks in Pacific Palisades, officials could form partnerships with adjacent communities that could share tanks in times of crisis.

Repositioning and diversifying supply sources, Schwabe explained, would be more strategic than increasing the amount of water flowing into the region.

He likened the situation to a house fire, where neighbors only have one garden hose and ask their neighbors to get another. Similar to this home, Schwabe explained, Southern California will likely need “more garden hoses and bigger garden hoses” in the future.

Patrick Reed, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, echoed these sentiments, identifying a divide between two elements of Los Angeles’ water management: “crisis response and long-term planning”.

The situation at the Pacific Palisades water reservoir “reflects the extraordinary demands” local officials faced in managing the immediate crisis, Reed said in an emailed statement.

“Long-term planning of city water supplies would not normally assume that they would be used to fight large-scale wildfires in densely populated urban areas,” he continued.

The “staggering shocks” caused by the ongoing fires and the resulting stress on water use exceed any “peak demand scenario that would be used for planning,” according to Reed.

However, he stressed that a short-term disaster can have long-term impacts, in the form of loss of life and property damage.

Los Angeles, Reed explained, is dealing with a situation where the known risks of climate change “have manifested into the kind of extraordinary extreme event that we’re struggling to address in our long-term planning.”

Looking ahead, Schwabe said he could see the value of pausing to reassess crisis management plans in new climate scenarios, not just in Southern California, but in other areas of the western US.

“If it’s not, you’re assuming these are very rare events and you’re basing your decisions on past climate data and evidence,” he said.

“Then you’re likely to keep making those mistakes,” Schwabe added.

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