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Trump Announces Farmer-Friendly Water Plan In Bakersfield; State Says It Will Sue (Updated)

Trump Announces Farmer-Friendly Water Plan In Bakersfield; State Says It Will Sue (Updated)

By 5:28 pm Editor's Blog 0 Comments

Update:

From Golden State Salmon Association president John McManus:

“Californians are heartened to hear that the Newsom administration will take action to stop Donald Trump’s attempted rerouting of water from northern California salmon rivers to his supporters in the dry western San Joaquin Valley.  We hope the governor allows Attorney General Xavier Becerra to do his job of protecting California’s environment, which Becerra has proven very good at.” 

A measure of Governor Newsom’s sincerity will be if he orders his Department of Water Resources to pull their Trump-like water pumping plan back and rework so it’s protective of the environment.

In Trump’s water remarks today in Bakersfield, many Californians noticed that the president never said a word about the tens of thousands of salmon industry jobs, including many in rural areas that his new water diversion plan would destroy.”   

 

 

As expected, President Donald Trump announced to a crowd in Bakersfield during his California trip that he plans to divert water to benefit some of his biggest supporters, Central Valley farmers. The fishing/environmentalist community sees such a decision as potentially devastating for salmon and other native fish in the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

Here’s the Sacramento Bee and Fresno Bee with some details: including Gov. Gavin Newsom’s role, which has been critcized in the past:

Newsom has been promoting a grand compromise plan on allocating river flows that are designed to prop up faltering fish populations — a plan that he says could resolve decades of “water wars” in California. Some farm irrigation agencies, including the influential Westlands Water District in Fresno, have threatened to withdraw from the compromise talks if Newsom sued over Trump’s Delta pumping plan.

Meanwhile, most environmentalists are skeptical about Newsom’s river-flow compromise and are pushing Newsom to fight the Trump plan in court.

Environmentalists say the Delta pumps are so powerful that they can alter the natural water flows in the estuary, diverting migratory fish toward predators and the pumps themselves. They argue that additional pumping will put more pressure on endangered species such as Delta smelt and Chinook salmon, whose populations have dwindled in recent years.

Newsom and the state are planning to sue over the water diversion plan.

Some other reactions to Trump’s stopver in Bakersfield:

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