SACRAMENTO — Several years ago, after she’d been elected state Assembly speaker, I asked Karen Bass about her views on the water supply — specifically from the troubled Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. She was honest in her ignorance.
“I’m strictly a city kid,” she replied, smiling. “Coming from L.A., we use [the water]. But we have no concept where it comes from. We get it out of a bottle or the tap.”
Until last month, that is, when firefighters opened taps on hydrants in Pacific Palisades, and there wasn’t any water to douse the flames incinerating houses.
The water pressure wasn’t strong enough to compete against the catastrophic wildfires fanned by hurricane-force winds. But fingers naturally were pointed at Mayor Bass. Why hadn’t she planned for this disaster? As if anyone could.
Bass has gotten way up to speed on California water since we spoke over lunch back in 2008. What impressed me about her back then — and still does — was her candor in acknowledging what she didn’t know and her commitment to learn.
It’s the mirror opposite of another city kid — the one with Manhattan roots.
President Trump is totally ignorant of California’s complex water system and will never acknowledge it. Calling him ignorant is giving the guy the benefit of the doubt. It’s saying he’s misinformed and fantasizing, not outright lying, as he meddles deeply in California water.
But briefly back to Bass: I asked whether she had any idea how to make the delta a more reliable water source for Central and Southern California without devastating the estuary’s communities and farms and killing off the remaining endangered salmon that were vital for the coastal fishing industry.
“I know that it’s a tremendous issue — I mean ‘Chinatown,’ the movie,” she said, referring to the 1974 classic about L.A. draining the Owens Valley in the Eastern Sierra to nurture the city’s growth.
“That was the extent of my knowledge. Then I come up here [to Sacramento] and find out I live in a flood plain. I was stunned.”
She took field trips into the San Joaquin Valley farm belt to learn about California’s severe water problems. Water became a self-described “high priority” for her.
Trump doesn’t need a farm visit. He needs to look at a map and learn something about California geography. And do some simple research about where and how water flows in California — and specifically into the L.A. Basin.
Most of L.A. city’s water comes from three sources: The Owens Valley, through its own aqueduct; the Colorado River, under a multi-state agreement overseen by the federal government; and the State Water Project. Colorado River and state water are purchased from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
The federal Central Valley Project provides water for the 444-mile-long Central Valley, mainly its agriculture. It doesn’t send any water into Southern California, a fact Trump either doesn’t realize or simply ignores. It’s state water that is pumped over the Tehachapi Mountains into the Southland, and Trump has no control over it, despite what he implies.
The Delta-Mendota Canal runs south along the western edge of the San Joaquin Valley, parallel to the California Aqueduct.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
State and federal water both flow from dams and rivers into the delta, where roughly 5 million acre-feet annually is pumped south through canals into the San Joaquin Valley, Central Coast and Southern California.
The president keeps saying California gets water from the Pacific Northwest. No, that’s Oregon and Washington. Their water stays there — although every few years someone voices a crackpot idea about California importing water from the Columbia River. It can’t happen politically or economically.
Trump has even recently talked about siphoning water from Canada for California. Except he seems to think the system already exists and the Canadian water flows down here “naturally.” It’s hard to really know what he thinks.
Maybe he’ll next suggest towing icebergs from Greenland.
But it’s clear he believes there’s some delta “valve” that could send “massive amounts of water” to L.A. to fight wildfires — if only Gov. Gavin Newsom would twist it open.
Fantasy.
Last week, Trump bragged on his social media platform that the military had entered California and “under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest and beyond.” Nothing like that happened. Federal pumps had been briefly shut down for maintenance and were turned back on.
Parroting agriculture interests, Trump claims much of the delta water is wasted because it flows to the sea. Of course it does. That’s necessary to repel salt water and make delta water safe for drinking and irrigation. It also flushes pollution out of San Francisco Bay. It carries sand to beaches and baby salmon to the ocean to grow into iconic, tasty creatures.
Trump has issued two executive orders that would gut the federal Endangered Species Act to pump more delta water and reduce protection for declining salmon, steelhead trout and ancient sturgeon.
California’s coastal salmon industry already is in dry dock. Fishing seasons have been canceled the last two years because there aren’t enough fish. Some boat skippers are trying to keep their vessels afloat with whale watching and the scattering of human remains.
Under the guise of providing more water for Southern California — a task impossible for the federal government — Trump, in reality, is trying to increase pumping for San Joaquin Valley irrigation.
And that could end up cutting water for Southern California because the state, under its own endangered species act, would conceivably reduce its pumping to protect declining fish.
If the feds take more water from the delta, “the burden to meet water quality standards would fall on the State Water Project. This would likely lead to less water available for Southern California — not more,” water experts Greg Gartrell and Sarah Bardeen wrote for the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.
Trump should ask Bass for some tutoring on California water to avoid the unintended consequences of his delusional policies. And invite her into the White House theater so they can watch “Chinatown” together.
