“Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California,” President Trump posted on Friday on social media in an apparent reference to the dam releases. “Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory! I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!”
This past Thursday, the Army Corps released water from two dams in California, Lake Kaweah and Lake Success- in order to “ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires,” said a Corps spokesperson.
The release is continuing over the weekend according to the Corps website. As of February 1 at 9 AM Kaweah Lake is down nearly 3000 acre feet from January 30- from 40,000s, down to near 37,000af – with that water sent downstream even though farmers don’t irrigate as of February
UPDATE: It is down 4000 acre feet as of Sunday Feb 2
It’s not clear how far the water could flow but the last stop is Tulare lakebed about 30 miles away.
All of the Kaweah River flow is retained in Tulare and Kings counties to supply farmers needing irrigation water in the summer months. None will help LA fire suppression.
None of the Kaweah or Tule river’s flow extends beyond the enclosed lake basin and certainly doesn’t go to Los Angeles 200 miles away. In fact farmers have made a point of wanting to retain water that flows from their backyards and strongly oppose any effort to export it. Kings County, where the lakebed is, has an ordinance to that effect.
Nevertheless, the LA Times reported that an Army Corps spokesperson tied the releases to Trump’s executive order on Sunday directing all federal agencies to maximize water deliveries and misleadingly blaming state water management for the Los Angeles fires.
“Consistent with the direction in the Executive Order on Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in California, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is releasing water from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Success Lake to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires,” Gene Pawlik said in a statement. (Firefighters had contained the Palisades and Eaton fires to 98 and 99 percent as of Friday morning.)
Kaweah water managers decried the release, noting it will do little to fight fires in Los Angeles, but would reduce water storage for Tulare and Kings County farmers, arguably Mr. Trump’s strong constituents.Both counties voted strongly for Mr Trump.
But farmers want to keep all the surface water they can upstream until irrigation season- months away.
“We need to keep every bit that we have, because this potentially is irrigation water that we have up there,” Kaweah Watermaster Victor Hernandez said. He said he was still trying to get members of Congress to intervene to slow the releases on Friday, including Reps. Jim Costa (D-Calif.), David Valadao (R-Calif.) and Vince Fong (R-Calif.). None responded to requests for comment.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dramatically increased the amount of water flowing from Kaweah and Tule Rivers into Lake Kaweah and Success Lake on Thursday night at the order of the Trump administration.
Press reports say the order initially called for as much water as possible to flow from the rivers known as “channel capacity,” with only an hour’s notice to local water officials, leaving them scrambling. After local water officials expressed their concerns, the Army Corp of Engineers reduced the amount released although it was still far above normal on Friday morning.
When it comes to these types of releases that are normally done because of flooding, Tulare Irrigation District General Manager Aaron Fukada told SJV Water “Normally, these kinds of flood releases are done with a lot of notification and coordination,” Fukuda said. “I’ve been doing this for 18 years and have never seen something like this.”
The Porterville paper reported The Army Corps of Engineers is “conducting controlled water releases” from the two dams, said Tyler Stalker, a spokesperson for the Corps in Sacramento about the Lake Kaweah Dam and the Richard L. Schafer Dam at Success Lake. “The action is being coordinated with local officials. The releases are within the capacity of the downstream waterways.”
Gene Pawlik, a spokesperson at the Corps’ headquarters in Washington, D.C., told the Los Angeles Times the action was “consistent with the direction” in Trump’s recent executive order to enact “emergency measures to provide water resources” in California.
Is this an example of ‘shock and awe’ and ‘ flooding the zone”?