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A few weeks back, when parts of Southern California were engulfed in wildfires – we just checked the calendar and realized it only feels like 17,000 years ago – America’s wet-brained big boy president had a genius idea.
Firefighters battling the blazes in the Pacific Palisades reported that they were running out of water. This was due to the fires being so huge that they overwhelmed Southern California’s firefighting infrastructure. The nearby reservoirs were mostly full, but the amount of water flowing from hydrants (and burned homes) all over the city and county led to a catastrophic loss of water pressure. The fires were simply a worst-case scenario beyond what pre-climate change infrastructure was designed for.
But Donald Trump had a solution. There was plenty of water in the Pacific Northwest. All California needed to do was turn a giant spigot, and all the beautiful water from Oregon and Washington would flow to them, and then everyone would have enough water forever and ever, hallelujah. And the only reason the liberals in California had yet to turn the spigot on is because they are a bunch of radical Marxists who care more about fish than they do people, and also they hate TRUMP. Obviously.
Which led to this announcement from Trump’s TruthSocial account on Tuesday:
Wait, “beyond?” Where else does he mistakenly think this water comes from? Because it certainly is not coming from the Pacific Northwest, let alone … Canada? The Yukon? The Aleutian Islands?
In reality, a couple of water pumps in California that are controlled by the federal government and are part of the vast infrastructure that moves water around the state were offline for a couple of days for routine maintenance. The Army Corps of Engineers had simply restarted these pumps. This had zero effect on the amount of water available to firefighters still battling blazes around Los Angeles.
Trump, because he doesn’t have the brains that God gave an avocado, translated this as some sort of show of force by the United States government against those dang California hippies. His spokesidiot, Karoline Leavitt, repeated the lie in her first press conference (the same one she kicked off by promising to never lie to the media), complete with some dramatic-sounding language about the military being “on the ground” in California to make this miracle happen.
Well, of course the Army Corps of Engineers was “on the ground” maintaining the federal government’s responsibilities in the vast archipelago of water infrastructure in California. The Army Corps of Engineers is always fucking doing that, just as it works on and maintains civilian engineering projects all over the country.
But the Corps wasn’t done. Perhaps it had to show Great Leader that it was still working the problem. Or, more likely, some asshole Trump appointee in the Pentagon demanded a larger contribution than simply turning a couple of pumps back on. Which led to Friday morning, when the Corps suddenly released water from two dams in rural Tulare County, which sent water towards the San Joaquin Valley and its abundant farmland.
The problem? The Corps didn’t warn local water managers in advance like they usually do. Doing controlled releases of water requires a lot of coordination between local, state and federal agencies to avoid unintended consequences.
[California water consultant Dan] Vink said local water officials heard Thursday afternoon that the Army Corps planned to “go from a fairly nominal release to channel capacity in two hours.”
A release of that magnitude, he said, would normally be coordinated days in advance, in part because farmers might have expensive farm equipment placed near riverbanks. There are also homeless encampments near some riverbanks, and officials would want to make sure people were out of the way and not in danger before unleashing so much water.
The small, independent news outlet SJV Water, which covers water policy in California, was even more alarmed:
Water managers said they got about an hour’s warning from the Army Corp’s Sacramento office to expect the Tule and Kaweah rivers to be at “channel capacity” by Thursday night.
Channel capacity means the maximum amount of water a river can handle. For the Kaweah, that’s 5,500 cubic feet per second and for the Tule, it’s 3,500 cfs.
Those levels were last seen, and surpassed, during the 2023 floods, which destroyed dozens of homes and businesses and caused significant damage to infrastructure.
This is why these releases need to be coordinated – so you don’t flood the state’s 40% of farmland that is dedicated to agriculture and provides about a third of America’s vegetables and three-quarters of our fruits and nuts. (The other quarter is provided by the Republicans, yuk yuk yuk.)
There’s also the not-trivial detail that a huge release of water from the dams now means there’s likely to be less water stored for the summer, in a drought year when rainfall has already been scarce — one of the chief contributing factors to the LA fires.
Also, and almost needless to say, none of the released water was destined for firefighters in Southern California, where the fires have mostly been contained anyway.
Also also almost needless to say, none of this water comes from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond. The water from these two rivers comes from rain and melted snowpack.
Also also also this week, federal firefighters who fought the LA fires got the same deferred resignation offer as all other 2 million federal employees. Which, if any of them take it, means fewer firefighters during the next crisis.
Greatest. President. Ever
As ever, reality means nothing in Trump’s America. Which is why the walking turd posted this on X on Friday:
Hey everyone, look at this stock photo of a mountain pool someone on my staff found for me! This is now how all of Southern California looks now. Don’t forget to thank your favorite president, TRUMP!
Forget it, Jake, it’s Trumptown.
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