This post provides information about how Gavin Newsom’s environmental policies are exacerbating the fire situation in California.  The key to the firefighting problem in L.A. county is that about 50 percent of the water in California is set aside for  environmental use, is allowed to flow into the Pacific ocean to preserve the salmon and smelt.

First, I must set the stage.

Ed Koch was defeated when he ran for re-election in 1989 as New York City’s mayor.  Asked if he would run again, he said, “No.  The people have spoken, and they must be punished.”

Koch’s remark could be applied to the people of California since gross mismanagement of Governor Gavin Newsom just keeps coming.  It’s sad that the people of California have spoken several times for Newsom.  He has been twice elected governor and survived a recall in 2021. 

Newsom’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, filed a lawsuit in 2020 to stop a Trump administration order that would have redirected water supply to the south of the state.  Becerra argued that the order would cause harm to endangered fish species.  The lawsuit alleged that Trump’s Bureau of Reclamation issued an incorrect opinion that freed up water would not endanger the local fish.

Rules governing the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta have long been fraught with legal wrangling over the balance of needs between Central Valley agriculture and endangered fish species, including the Chinook salmon and the delta smelt, an endangered three-inch-long inedible fish native to the delta.

Newsom has removed four (what he claimed were) obsolete hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River to save the salmon.  In view of Newson’s dam destruction, here is an interesting quote by U.C. Santa Cruz professor and hydrogeologist Andrew Fisher: “The primary forms of storage for water in California are the snowpack that typically accumulates annually and then reservoirs behind dams.”

The people of California continue to be punished.  Newsom, in an effort to protect the smelt, has supported plans that prioritize water allocations to restore the smelt population by sending water into the Pacific Ocean rather than diverting it to other, more needy purposes like firefighting.

Newsom has always prioritized water for fish over people.  His prioritization is now causing misery for thousands of L.A. County residents as fires burn while hydrants are dry.  To paraphrase Koch, Californians have spoken.  Now they’re getting punished. 

Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Image: seabamirum via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.