Real Facts: Debunking Water Disinformation
The recent catastrophic fires in Southern California have led to a flurry of misinformation and disinformation on social media platforms about water availability and access. This fake news misleads the public, undermines essential fire-fighting efforts, and detracts from the very real water distribution challenges Californians face. Here is C-WIN’s response that corrects the record by addressing some of these spurious claims:
1. Fire hydrants in the Pacific Palisades area ran out of water during the fires because Los Angeles didn’t have enough to spare.
The water shortages in Pacific Palisades were a local infrastructure issue—not a regional water supply problem.
The Los Angeles region has plenty of water in storage to meet citizen needs. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California—the country’s largest water district—serves 19 million people (including Los Angeles) with water from the massive State Water Project and the Colorado River. It maintains three large reservoirs and five treatment plants and always has sufficient water for ratepayer needs—even during drought.
Fire hydrants in the City of Los Angeles are largely served by 114 large tanks; all were filled to capacity when the recent wildfires struck. However, three 1 million gallon tanks that serve the Pacific Palisades region were unable to refill quickly during wildfire fighting efforts due to the extremely high demand, and the hydrants ultimately ran out of water. A 117-million-gallon reservoir located in Pacific Palisades was also empty and offline pending repairs to a floating cover. Both issues reflect deficiencies in the general water distribution system for the City of Los Angeles, not regional water supply. The City’s distribution system was designed to address wildfire incidents of limited number, scope, and endurance—not a city-wide conflagration that lasted weeks.
In this era of accelerating climate change, Southern California clearly needs to reconsider its water distribution assets, firefighting policies, and first responder capabilities. Basic water supply, however, is not the problem.
2. Los Angeles is experiencing water shortages due to protections for the Delta Smelt and other endangered fish.
This is misinformation. Flows to protect valuable fisheries and endangered species have no impact on Southern California’s water supplies.
This canard has been hammered aggressively by President Trump; he recently signed an executive order to curtail through-Delta fishery restoration flows from the federal Central Valley Project (CVP) to maximize water exports to the Central Valley. His reasoning is specious for several reasons. First, river flows aimed at enhancing critically endangered fish populations have been minimal and have had little impact on water exports to California’s metropolitan areas. Second, Los Angeles and other large California cities do not receive water from the CVP; what Delta water they do receive is transported through the CVP’s California analogue, the State Water Project. Trump’s executive order, in other words, does nothing to safeguard Los Angeles or other cities from wildfire. But the true beneficiaries of the CVP—Central Valley corporate growers—do stand to reap windfalls if the executive order is upheld in the courts and implemented. Most CVP water goes to the sprawling corporate farms of the western San Joaquin Valley, and Trump’s executive order is clearly designed to expedite water deliveries to their operations.
3. Two powerful Democratic Party contributors—Stewart and Lynda Resnick—control most of Southern California’s water, contributing to the water “shortage” for Los Angeles.
The Resnicks have an outsized and inequitable influence on water distribution in California, but they had no connection to water delivery problems during the recent Los Angeles wildfires.
As noted, Los Angeles did not face any water storage shortfalls during the recent wildfires. Steward and Lynda Resnick played no role in hydrant or other water delivery difficulties during the conflagration. The Resnicks do, however, maintain a controlling interest in the Kern Water Bank, a huge underground reservoir that they tap to grow thousands of acres of nuts and pomegranates. The Resnicks obtained rights to this vast rechargeable aquifer in a 1994 sweetheart deal with the State of California known as the Monterey Amendments. This sub-rosa accord gave away millions of acre feet of public water to the Resnicks for their private interests and profits. A reversal of this corrupt arrangement is sorely needed—but not because the Resnicks contributed to water shortages during an unprecedented wildfire catastrophe. They didn’t.
4. In California, It’s either fish or people—there isn’t enough water for both.
Again, this claim is patently wrong. We have enough water in California for all reasonable uses, including fisheries support. The real problems are excessive water supply contracts based on inequitable and unsustainable water rights. The federal government honors these contracts even though both state and federal law requires adequate water to maintain fisheries and ecosystems.
California’s surface water largely exists in a thoroughly plumbed environment—from huge storage reservoirs in the North State and along the western slope of the Sierra to a sprawling complex of canals, pumps and pipes that deliver the water. There is enough water in this vast system to support our salmon and other valuable fisheries, resident households, and agriculture for domestic consumption. There is NOT enough water to supply all these demands AND devote 80% to agribusiness, which is largely predicated on luxury export crops such as Central Valley almonds. Further confounding the issue are existing water rights claims. Currently, claims on California water exceed supply by more than five times. Such “paper water” has stymied reforms that would insure demand conforms with existing supplies and fair and sustainable distribution policies. To repeat: we have all the water we need in California—but we must reduce allocations to corporate agribusiness to accommodate both climate realities and social equity.
5. We need the Delta Tunnel to ensure water security for Californians
The Delta Tunnel will do nothing to improve water security because it cannot produce more water than nature provides. It can only expedite deliveries to corporate stakeholders at the expense of ratepayers, taxpayers and the environment.
Donald Trump and Gavin Newsom may be mortal political enemies, but it’s clear they agree on one thing: the construction of a Delta water conveyance system. The Delta Tunnel is Newsom’s version of the Peripheral Canal and the Twin Tunnels—conveyance systems that former Governor Jerry Brown tried to ram through during his previous terms as governor. Newsom’s project would consist of a gigantic tunnel underneath the Delta, requiring a minimum of $20 billion from taxpayers and ratepayers. It would expedite water deliveries to corporate agriculture and Southern California, which does not need additional water and already faces water affordability challenges. Newsom’s support for such a boondoggle is mystifying to the environmentalists who helped put him in office, given it is precisely the scenario that Donald Trump favors. One logical explanation: water always flows toward money, especially in California. The power of the state’s agricultural and business lobby is formidable, and Newsom—like Trump—has bent his knee to it, ignoring the fact that reducing water supply to corporate agriculture, coupled with urban conservation, stormwater capture, aquifer recharge, and recycling are solutions that better ensure water security, sustainability, and cost effectiveness.