Imagine how shocked you’d be if a neighbor just marched into your home and turned on every shower and sink in the house. That’s how some California water managers might have felt last year, when President Trump ordered the Army Corp of Engineers to open-up flows from the part of California’s vast water system that’s controlled by the Federal Government.
The surprise diversion flowed into reservoirs in the Central Valley and seemed designed to make good on promises laid out in a presidential memorandum, “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.” Trump backed it up with an executive order and what’s now known as Action 5. A plan for the Bureau of Reclamation to divert more water to farmers, independent of State Water officials.
Jon Rosenfield, Ph.D., is Science Director with the nonprofit, San Francisco Baykeeper.
“So that’s what action five does, is sort of, enshrines their previous violations in a new, set of operations, which again, they didn’t consult with the federal regulatory agencies over. They just said, hey, we’re going to- we’re going to do this,” says Rosenfield.
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