Oakland, CA — Today, Donald Trump signed an executive order to form a "subcabinet" office of water policy, with a mandate of meeting the water demands of industrial agriculture and fracking. An executive order from Trump put Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler in charge of the interagency body. Bernhardt is a former lobbyist for the Central Valley's Westlands Water District, the nation's largest industrial agricultural water district.
In response, Baykeeper Executive Director Sejal Choksi-Chugh issued the following statement:
"Trump's newly created office of water policy is nothing more than a license to steal the public's water at public expense. The tragic consequences of diverting water away from the Bay is as obvious as Bernhardt's conflict of interest — just ask the fishermen up and down the West Coast who depend on healthy fish populations, or, if they could speak, ask the endangered Chinook salmon whose population will crash into oblivion during our lifetime. California's waters belong to all of us, not just to industrial farmers and oil frackers."