Trump ‘Opened’ the Water in California and Wasted It
Orders from Washington for releases at two dams didn’t benefit anyone and made nobody happy, except maybe the president.
None of the released water will reach fire-ravaged Los Angeles.
Photographer: Mario Tama/Getty Images
Early one summer morning in 1989, photographer Matt Black and I descended by elevator into the bowels of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ Terminus Dam in California to watch the dam operator open the gate and let some water out of Lake Kaweah. We were working on a series of articles for the Tulare Advance-Register about the area’s water supply, and we followed the water as it flowed down the Kaweah River, was supplemented by water from the federal Friant-Kern Canal, then was diverted into irrigation ditches that carried it toward the cotton fields, orange groves and vineyards of Tulare County, then and now one of the nation’s most productive agricultural areas (albeit with almonds and pistachios having pushed aside cotton).
The water was steered by people with titles such as “water master” and “ditch tender,” its course determined in part by century-old water rights along the Kaweah River and in part by federal contracts for San Joaquin River water delivered through the Friant-Kern Canal that area farmers had agreed to in 1949 and 1950. The previous winter had been pretty dry, so water was delivered only in June and July. None of the Kaweah River’s water was destined for elsewhere in California — in wet years it flows into the remnants of once-giant Tulare Lake, which has no outlet, and in dry ones the river just disappears in western Tulare County — and none of the farmers would have wanted it in January or February.