Washington Post: Army Corps knew Trump order would waste California water, memo shows
By Scott Dance and Joshua Partlow
The Army Corps of Engineers colonel responsible for releasing water from two California reservoirs at President Donald Trump’s direction in January knew that it was unlikely to reach the southern part of the state as Trump had promised, according to a memo obtained by The Washington Post.
The agency carried out Trump’s directive, which came in the wake of catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles County, on short notice on Jan. 30, though it would normally require days to coordinate. A memo written four days after the release, obtained by The Post through a public records request, shows how federal officials rushed ahead with the plan to release irrigation water despite objections from the state’s elected officials and some local farmers.
Col. Chad W. Caldwell, commander of the Army Corps’ Sacramento district, wrote that the water that poured out of Lake Kaweah and Success Lake “could not be delivered to Southern California directly.” To do so would have required several steps of coordination with state and federal agencies to transport the water to a rarely used connection point, and it quickly became clear that was impossible in such little time, according to the memo.
The release was done to satisfy Trump’s executive order, Caldwell wrote. And the colonel had also been asked to send photos of the water to Washington, according to an official familiar with the request who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Trump posted a photo of water flowing from Lake Kaweah on X the next day.
After hearing concerns from elected officials and their constituents “about potential flooding of downstream lands,” the agency reduced the water flow, Caldwell wrote.
An Army Corps spokesman declined to answer questions about what happened behind the scenes before and during the water release but said agency leaders routinely write such memos, known as memorandums for record, “to show the authority or basis for an action taken.”
The White House did not comment.
The release from the two Sierra Nevada reservoirs — which technically fall under the authority of the Army Corps but are managed in coordination with other federal, state and local agencies — did not cause major flooding, and some of the water flowed underground to sites that store groundwater for future use. But the episode, a week and a half into Trump’s second term, drew criticism from farmers and officials from both parties in the Central Valley.
It also angered many California water officials, who charge that the Trump administration squandered local water supplies in a part of the state where every drop counts, to score quick political points.
“This was completely unprecedented,” said one water official in California who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe concerns about the federal government’s approach.
Even though the Los Angeles fires were declared contained soon after the release began, Trump celebrated what he called the “beautiful water flow that I just opened in California.”
“I only wish they listened to me six years ago,” Trump wrote on X on Jan. 31. “There would have been no fire!”
The release was also an early sign of upheaval to come for water managers in the West. The Trump administration has moved to cut staff at the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages reservoirs and canals across the West. Senate Democrats in the region wrote to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum this week to complain about staff cuts, which were first reported by the Los Angeles Times, and the freeze on funding that has been instrumental in preserving Colorado River water and keeping major reservoirs from falling to dangerous levels.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-California) called the water release — at a time when the fires were already contained — a “potent example of the danger of an administration that either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what they do.”
“It was clearly nothing but a poor publicity stunt. And it was a dangerous one,” Padilla said in an interview. “An unexpected, non-noticed release threatens lives, threatens the safety of communities if you flood somewhere without the proper coordination.”
In California, the decision to release water from reservoirs is normally done after careful planning between several agencies to allow those downstream to clear debris and prepare to use the water sent flowing through canals.
But that didn’t happen earlier this year.
On Jan. 30, at the 10 a.m. staff meeting of water officials at a joint operations center in Sacramento, the Army Corps representative did not mention that a release would begin at 6 p.m. that evening. These weekly meetings during flood season include representatives from the California Department of Water Resources, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Reclamation and other agencies that help meticulously track snowpack and incoming storms to calibrate water flows across the state’s complicated network of canals and reservoirs.
The first that Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth heard about the planned release came in a phone call from an Army Corps colonel around noon that day, according to a state water official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private communications.
Other water entities, such as local irrigation districts and the State Water Resources Control Board, also received notice from the Army Corps on the same day as the water release began.
Many were alarmed when they found out.
For the farmers in the Central Valley, it was not irrigation season, and this was their precious summer supply. It had been an abnormally dry January, snowpack was low, and an atmospheric river headed toward California was not forecast to significantly affect the two reservoirs in the foothills of the southern Sierra Nevada.
The Army Corps should have focused on maximizing storage, not dumping water in January in a place “where it doesn’t really serve anybody,” said Jeffrey Kightlinger, former general manager of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
“We need it in the summer,” he said.
There is a potential connection several watersheds to the south for water released from Lake Kaweah and Success Lake to make its way to the State Water Project — the network of canals and reservoirs that would feed down to Southern California. But it has been used just twice since 2006, in both instances during times of flooding, according to state officials. The water released this year did not reach that location, officials said.
The water would typically end up at the Tulare Lake Basin. That normally dry lake bed flooded during the wet winter of 2023, inundating farmland, homes and businesses — and water officials work aggressively to keep water from returning there.
The prospect of water heading that way was “really alarming and surprising,” said Denise England, a Tulare County official who handles water issues.
England learned of it at 3:25 p.m. on Jan. 30, when she received an email from a Tulare County colleague informing her that Army Corps officials were planning to do a “maximum release of water beginning tonight.”
“Please keep an eye on our bridges and creeks,” the official wrote to several colleagues, adding that “we may have some flooding issues.”
England was told to expect water flowing out at 5,000 cubic feet per second — a rate she described as turning “the gates wide open.”
“The volume of water didn’t make sense,” she said. “The way it came down didn’t make sense. Because usually we would have had meetings with our local water agencies to get the channels ready.”
Under normal circumstances, releases are carefully communicated in advance to downstream water managers, farmers and residents, said Calvin Foster, a former Army Corps official who retired in November from his post overseeing several dams, including the ones at Success Lake and Lake Kaweah. And releases typically ramp up gradually, he said. A sudden surge of water from upstream can be dangerous to anyone downstream, including people fishing or kayaking or homeless people who set up camp along riverbanks, Foster said.
So the sudden releases from those reservoirs were “a bit out of left field,” Foster said.
At the time, the water levels in the two reservoirs were slightly higher than a benchmark giving the Army Corps discretion to conduct a release. While the reservoirs serve to maintain a healthy water supply, their main purpose is flood control, moderating the flow from storms and melting snowpack.
Foster said he believed releasing some water was warranted because a storm was forecast to bring rain and snow to the state in the days ahead, though it was mainly bringing precipitation farther north.
At about 3:30 p.m., Col. Caldwell contacted Nemeth at the California Department of Water Resources and Karl Stock, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Region 10 director, according to his memo.
“Both indicated that it would take more time for them to activate their systems and they likely could not utilize the additional water with such short notice,” he wrote.
Caldwell told Nemeth that he had been instructed to take photos of the water being released and send them to Washington, according to the official familiar with the call.
“This person knew [the release] flew in the face of every reason … we operate the system and the reservoir,” the official said.
Caldwell soon heard from elected officials and others in the Central Valley, including Republican Reps. Vince Fong and David G. Valadao, “to ask why the water was being released as it was typical to reserve as much water as possible for the summer growing season.”
“The elected officials expressed concerns from their constituents about potential flooding of downstream lands,” he wrote.
Asked about this issue, Fong said in a statement: “Having the President of the United States actively engaged in California’s water policy is critical to our efforts to modernize and improve California’s water storage and conveyance system.”
Caldwell wrote that releases were reduced to 1,500 cubic feet per second at one dam and 1,000 cubic feet per second at the other — to avoid downstream damage — and further cutbacks came in the following days to “minimize risk of downstream impacts.”
Along with the photo Trump posted on X, he touted that 1.6 billion gallons were being released that day and “in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons.”
“Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!”
The Army Corps turned off the spigot Feb. 2 after letting out 2.511 billion gallons, according to Caldwell.
It was less than half of what Trump promised.
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