We now know that Trump’s order to the military to “turn on the valve” and give southern California all the water it could ever need resulted in the Army Corps of Engineers releasing a bunch of water into a flood plain without notice almost causing a catastrophe. Oh, and the water would not have flowed to Southern California in any case. The whole thing is insane but apparently we have the military carrying out insane orders that they must know make no sense which is extremely troubling.
And now we have Musk lying like Trump to his millions of followers about this ridiculous stunt.
The LA Times article is a bullshit snowjob by the way. But even with that the truth can gleaned if you read the whole thing.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has dramatically increased the amount of water flowing from two dams in Tulare County, sending massive flows down river channels toward farmlands in the San Joaquin Valley.
Federal records show that water releases from Terminus Dam at Lake Kaweah and Schafer Dam at Lake Success jumped early Friday morning.
The sudden increase occurred four days after President Trump said on social media that the U.S. military had “entered” California and “TURNED ON THE WATER.” Trump also vowed during a visit to Los Angeles last week to “open up the valves and pumps” in California to deliver more water.
Deliver it to where???
Responding to questions about the reasons for the sudden increase in water flow, Gene Pawlik, a spokesperson at the Corps’ headquarters in Washington, said in an email that the action was “consistent with the direction” in Trump’s recent executive order to enact “emergency measures to provide water resources” in California.
Pawlik said the Army Corps was releasing water from the dams “to ensure California has water available to respond to the wildfires.” It was not immediately clear how or where the federal government intends to transport the water.
That spokesperson is either a liar or he’s stupid. There was no way that water had anything to do with wildfires. And anyway, LA had water, that wasn’t the problem. I’m going to lose my mind with this bs.
Trump, meanwhile, shared a photo on X of water pouring from a dam, saying: “Photo of beautiful water flow that I just opened in California.”
“Today, 1.6 billion gallons and, in 3 days, it will be 5.2 billion gallons. Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory!,” Trump wrote. “I only wish they listened to me six years ago — There would have been no fire!”
The president has sought to link local water supply problems during the L.A. County firestorms, such as fire hydrants that ran dry, with his calls for changing water management elsewhere in the state. But state officials and water experts have called the comments inaccurate: Regional reservoirs in Southern California are at record-high levels, and more water from Northern California would not have affected the fire response.
No, his comments are delusional and insane and this is sane-washing.
Way down the in the article, you read that this was likely a result of Trump’s direct order and that they didn’t bother to coordinate with local officials which meant they could have endangered the lives of homeless people who live along the riverbanks and ruined expensive farm equipment that farmers didn’t have time to move. I’m sure Trump and his henchmen care nothing for the homeless, but their voters in the central valley might have been a little miffed at losing their expensive equipment. But whatever.
They add that this is sometimes done to help irrigate farms, but it isn’t the season for that so there was no benefit to anyone, not even Trump’s thirsty farmers.
Peter Gleick, a water scientist and senior fellow at the Pacific Institute, said dam managers would typically only release large quantities of water in the winter when major storms create a need to make space for large inflows of runoff. But Southern California has been very dry and the snowpack in the southern Sierra remains far below average, so “there is no indication that that’s why these releases occurred.”…
“I don’t know where this water is going, but this is the wrong time of year to be releasing water from these reservoirs. It’s vitally important that we fill our reservoirs in the rainy season so water is available for farms and cities later in the summer,” Gleick said. “I think it’s very strange and it’s disturbing that, after decades of careful local, state and federal coordination, some federal agencies are starting to unilaterally manipulate California’s water supply.”
Trump’s in charge of California’s water supply now and I guess we’ll just have to live with the gargantuan fuck-up it’s inevitably going to cause.
But at least we now know that we won’t have any more fires because he says he’s fixed them. Promises made, promises kept.