Concern About Water Diversion Changes And The Impact On The Trinity River
The sequel to the Trump administration is wasting no time attempting to input various policy changes, and the recent tragic Southern California wildfires provided Trump with his longstanding urge to impact California’s water diversion efforts.
As Trump’s plan is to allocate more water to farmers and other irrigation-related sources – thus threatening already struggling fish species like salmon, steelhead and the maligned native Delta smelt – that strategy has many stressed about the consequences for important watrersheds. The
Humboldt County’s Times-Standard recently published a report about how local authorities fear what that could mean for the Trinity River. Here’s a sample:
She is concerned the order — and new administration — will change flows on the Trinity River, which is diverted to send water to the Central Valley. A biological assessment for the river is expected to be drafted by the federal government in the upcoming years, with the last one drafted in 2000. The Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the NOAA Fisheries Service are all involved in the document, which analyzes the impacts of diversions on fish. She pointed out that David Bernhardt, Trump’s former deputy Interior secretary, was also a lobbyist for Westlands Water District, a water user in California’s Central Valley.
Organizations like Save California Salmon and the Golden State Salmon Association, which advocates for fishermen, point to previous Trump policies to blame for dwindling counts of salmon, which also coincided with drought.
“During the recent drought, the Bureau killed virtually all of the baby endangered winter-run Chinook salmon, as well as juvenile fall-run Chinook salmon in the Sacramento River. That salmon extinction plan is responsible for the collapse of Central Valley salmon runs, the closure of the California and coastal Oregon salmon fishing seasons in 2023 and 2024, and the loss of tens of thousands of salmon fishing jobs,” Scott Artis, Golden State Salmon Association executive director, said in a prepared statement.