Trump administration orders ‘alarming’ water releases in California

Two Central California rivers would have surged to flood levels under an abrupt order by the Army Corps of Engineers to increase water deliveries at the direction of the Trump administration, local officials said Friday.

The order late Thursday to increase flows from Sierra Nevada reservoirs to the rivers, which the Corps scaled back at the urging of the local authorities, came soon after President Donald Trump directed the federal government to “maximize” supplies as part of a long-running fight with the state over water management.

Local authorities scrambled to move equipment and alert farms about possible flooding before the Corps decided to reduce the releases from the reservoirs in response to concerns, said Victor Hernandez, who oversees water management on one of the rivers, the Kaweah in Tulare County. He said the Corps gave him one hour notice on Thursday.

An Army Corps spokesperson tied the releases to Trump’s executive order on Sunday directing all federal agencies to maximize water deliveries in order to respond to the fires that started in Los Angeles earlier this month.

While releasing water from reservoirs before a big storm, like the one expected to hit Northern California this weekend, is standard flood-control procedure to avoid overflowing dams, Hernandez said the Army Corps’ Thursday plan would have released far more water than needed. He said releasing the water at the capacity the Corps had planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, where the Corps’ reservoirs are located.