Donald Trump’s statements that there is no drought in California and shortages are being caused by water being pushed out to sea don’t reflect reality, critics said Tuesday.
Speaking in Fresno, Calif., during a rally on Friday, Trump said environmentalists are causing the “insane” and “ridiculous” water problems in the country’s most populous state.
Citing friends, Trump said the state’s water problems were not due to drought but instead to water mismanagement.
“They have farms up here and they don’t get water. And I said, Oh, that’s too bad, is it the drought?” Trump said. “And they say we have plenty of water. I say what’s wrong. Well, we shove it out to sea.”
Blaming environmentalists trying to save a “three-inch fish” — presumably the delta smelt, an endangered species — for the drought, Trump said he would put an end to the water shortage.
“If I win, we’re going to start opening up the water so that you can have your farmers survive so that your job market will get better,” he said.
“We’re gonna get it done. We’re gonna get it done so quick, don’t even think about it, that’s an easy one.”
But statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey and a leading academic in California say that not only is there a drought in California caused by natural forces, but it is among the worst in centuries.
The agency reports that Trump’s statements that the drought is being caused by water being let out to sea aren’t based on available data. In 2010, the last year statistics were available, just 2 percent of the state’s water went toward “aquaculture,” or water use associated with raising organisms that live in water.
More than 60 percent of the state’s water went toward agriculture, 16.6 percent went toward public supply and 17.4 percent went toward thermoelectric power generation, according to the Geological Survey.
Professor Jay Lund, of the Center for Watershed Sciences at the University of California-Davis, told the Washington Examiner that the last four years in California were the driest in decades.
The shrinking amount of water in reservoirs shows water shortages are real and not being caused by mismanagement, he said.
“The last four years in California were among the driest in 30 years, and by some measures the driest in more than 500 years,” Lund said. “Although this winter was wet enough to fill some of California’s reservoirs, surface reservoirs remain about 3 million acre-feet below average and groundwater in much of the state remains more than 10 million acre-feet depleted compared with before the drought. ”
Drought-causing problems also can be found in the state’s snowpack.
The water content of California’s Sierra Mountains snowpack was just 5 percent of the historical average. The Geological Survey reports that’s the lowest level since 1950.
Snowpack in the mountains is hugely important to water supplies in lower elevations. One-third of the state’s water supplies come from the Sierra Mountains snowpack, according to the Geological Survey.
Groundwater resources have been plundered to keep the state from going dry, according to the state’s Department of Water Resources.
Almost 46 percent of the state’s groundwater wells, 1,790, have seen drops between 10 and 100 feet in their levels from fall 2011 to fall 2015. Three percent, 119 wells, have seen decreases of more than 100 feet in groundwater levels.
Drought conditions have eased recently with a winter that brought an El Nino system to the state. Last month, Gov. Jerry Brown announced he would drop all water-use restrictions placed on urban areas last year for the coming summer.
The El Nino system brought precipitation that somewhat eased the water shortage, but Lund said the state isn’t in the clear.
“The drought this year is not nearly as bad as the last two years, but given California’s climate and the past four very dry years, it is prudent to prepare for additional dry years,” he said.
The statistics show Trump’s lack of understanding about the water situation, Rep. Jared Huffman, D-Calif., said Tuesday.
“Mr. Trump is either uninterested in the facts or he’s deliberately flouting them,” Huffman said.
Huffman represents California’s 2nd District, encompassing much of the northern California coastline from San Francisco to the Oregon border. Despite the area typically being rather lush, Huffman said he has watched his lawn turn into a “brown, dusty space” from lack of water, and many of his neighbors have either ripped theirs up or allowed them to die.
The reality is most of the state’s water is going to agricultural production, exactly the farmers whose lives Trump was promising to enhance Friday in Fresno, Huffman said. He accused Trump of pandering without offering any solutions.
“It’s this myth of abundance that could only exist if the great Donald Trump were in charge, this myth that Democrats are forcing austerity on the world,” he said.
