SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Water was still flowing out of the Terminus Dam near Visalia. But just a fraction of the estimated 2 billion plus gallons recently released from two dams in the Central Valley. President Trump ordered the move just days after signing an executive order directing federal agencies to essentially assert control over federal dams and aqueducts in California, claiming mismanagement by the state.
"All we're doing is giving Los Angeles and the entire state of California virtually unlimited water," said Pres. Trump.
But critics say releasing the water on short notice in the middle of winter did little for farmers, and could strain supplies when they're needed.
"And now they're acting without coordinating with anybody. And that's a real danger, both in the short term and because the farms that were relying on that water for summer irrigation now, now may not have that water to use because it was released at a time when no irrigation is actually occurring," says Jon Rosenfield, Ph.D., science director with the environmental nonprofit San Francisco Baykeeper.
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He says California's water has been managed in a delicate balance between state and federal systems for nearly a century. And he believes splitting dams and aqueducts into dueling government agencies could be dangerous, and potentially deadly.
"The fear is that people are going to get hurt either in the short term because mismanaged mismanaging river flows is going to result in flooding that does damage or endangers people's lives. And in the medium and long term, people are going to get hurt because we're mismanaging this. The San Francisco Bay ecosystem. And a lot of people rely on that ecosystem to have clean water and produce fisheries and other benefits," he adds.
Critics also argue that the release into the Central Valley has no direct benefit for firefighting efforts in Southern California either as the President previously claimed. Felicia Marcus is a visiting fellow at Stanford's Water in the West program, and former chair of the State Water Resource Control Board, which works with Federal partners on everything from agriculture to drinking water.
"And if you say you're doing it to help Los Angeles, it's the state project that delivers water to Southern California urban areas, not the federal one. And so you're putting a patina of disaster response on an action that has nothing to do with that disaster response. And at the same time, you're doing harm to really hard fought and difficult negotiations and relationships," explains Marcus.
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She's also concerned about the strain that an ongoing a tug of war could put on our water system moving forward.
"So this is one of the most complicated public works plumbing systems in the world. And so collaboration and coordination actually just makes sense and that the challenge with unilaterally saying we're going to violate rules or we're going to vitiate a hard negotiated agreement by professional water managers and their negotiations, is that even if you did it or were able to do it for a while, it just would make the state have to either hold more water back or let more water go in certain cases," says Marcus.
And perhaps triggering a 21st century water war, flowing along the fractured lines of our political landscape.
While several California lawmakers are challenging the move, President Trump is doubling down on social media, promising increased Federal water releases in the future.