Alex Padilla U.S. Senator for California

Senator Padilla calls Trump’s wasted and dangerous water releases a “potent example of the danger of an administration that either doesn’t know or doesn’t care what they do.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In case you missed it, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) recently blasted the Trump Administration’s reckless mismanagement of California water in a Washington Post article discussing the Army Corps of Engineers’ rash, unscheduled water releases from Lake Kaweah and Success Lake in Tulare County. President Trump lied about these releases to claim that the water could be used to assist in fighting Los Angeles County fires, even though the fires had already been contained. A memo obtained by the Post made clear that the Army Corps knew that this rushed release of irrigation water “could not be delivered to Southern California directly,” but was responding to President Trump’s Executive Order directing federal agencies to maximize water deliveries in the state.

Earlier this year, Senator Padilla immediately demanded answers from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth after Trump took credit for directing these dangerous releases and admitted he was responsible for nearly flooding downstream communities, while falsely claiming he delivered billions of gallons of water to Southern California. These actions wasted significant water resources that farmers were saving for use in the summer. Padilla also questioned Hegseth on President Trump’s January 27th Truth Social post, which claimed that the U.S. military “entered” California and “turned on the water” flowing from Northern California to other parts of the state, despite the fact that water was flowing at similar pumping levels as under the prior Administration. President Trump has incorrectly blamed statewide water policy for the devastating Los Angeles fires.

Local officials warned the Army Corps that releasing water at the levels the Corps planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, posing a flood risk to communities and farms down river and wasting water that could have been used for irrigation over the summer.

Key Excerpts:

• 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.

• 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.”

• 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.

• 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.

Full text of the article is available here.