Local officials had to talk the Army Corps of Engineers down after it abruptly alerted them Thursday afternoon it was about to increase flows from two reservoirs to maximum capacity — a move the agency said was in response to Trump directing the federal government to “maximize” water supplies.
Before the Corps ratcheted down its plan, local authorities scrambled to move equipment and warn farms about possible flooding, said Victor Hernandez, who oversees water management on one of the rivers, the Kaweah in Tulare County. He said the Corps gave him one hour notice on Thursday.
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While releasing water from reservoirs before a big storm, like the one expected to hit Northern California this weekend, is standard flood-control procedure to avoid overflowing dams, Hernandez said the Army Corps’ Thursday plan would have released far more water than needed. He said releasing the water at the capacity the Corps had planned to would have flooded both the Kaweah and Tule rivers, where the Corps’ reservoirs are located.
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Hernandez said that after he resisted the decision, Fromm told him the Corps would release the water at a third of the original planned speed, rather than at maximum capacity. Aaron Fukuda, the general manager of the Tulare Irrigation District, also confirmed the Army Corps reduced flood releases after local officials pushed back.
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Hernandez said he thinks the current releases are still too much because, he said, the reservoir has enough capacity to absorb any coming storm and would not overflow.
Dumping the water from Lake Kaweah and Success Lake poses a flood risk to downstream communities, he said, like the town of Porterville, which nearly flooded during rainstorms in 2023. It also reduces the amount of irrigation water available to farmers during the driest months of the year. The snowpack in the Southern Sierra Nevada that California depends on for water supplies in the summer has dipped to 47 percent of average for this time of year after a dry January, according to state estimates released Friday.
The sudden announcement Thursday by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that Kaweah and Success lakes would immediately begin dumping water was in response to President Trump’s Jan. 24 executive order mandating that federal officials exert all efforts to get more water to fight southern California wildfires, the Army Corps confirmed Friday.
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Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
First, it would have to be pumped at great expense across the San Joaquin Valley to get to the California Aqueduct and then travel hundreds of miles south.
Second, this isn’t “loose” water free for the taking.
“Every drop belongs to someone,” said Kaweah River Watermaster Victor Hernandez. “The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours. If someone’s playing political games with this water, it’s wrong.”
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The Army Corps did not respond to questions about whether it will keep all its California reservoirs at flood control capacity going into the future. If so, that could have a major impact on how much is available for irrigation.
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For now, water managers are capturing flows in recharge basins, Eric Limas, General Manager for the Lower Tule River and Pixley irrigation districts, wrote in a text.
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.
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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.”
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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.
From the article:
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More:
Trump’s emergency water order responsible for water dump from Tulare County lakes (SJV Water)
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Army Corps knew Trump order would waste California water, memo shows (Washington Post)
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Here is the memo.