President-elect Trump is spreading a sham narrative to the country, which is being parroted by allies, about what is happening in the Golden State’s rivers and reservoirs

By Dan Bacher

As apocalyptic scenes emerged from the climate change-induced fires raging across the Pacific Palisades, Pasadena and other neighborhoods in Los Angeles, President Elect Donald Trump blasted California Governor Gavin Newsom on Truth Social for not signing a “water declaration” that would provide more water for Californians.

As he has done many times before, Trump blamed it all on the Delta smelt, though in reality this highly threatened fish has nothing to do with the current LA wildfires – or any other fire catastrophes.

An initial estimate of the cost of the LA fires is between $52 billion and $57 billion, making it the most expensive fire event in history, according to AccuWeather Inc.

Trump claimed Newsom “refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way. He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water (it didn’t work!), but didn’t care about the people of California.”

The problem is that the “water restoration” declaration cited by Trump does not exist. It is the first complete falsehood in Trump’s statement.

Newsom’s office sent the following statement to ABC10 regarding this.

“There is no such document as the water restoration declaration – that is pure fiction,” the statement stressed. “The Governor is focused on protecting people, not playing politics, and making sure firefighters have all the resources they need.”

The second falsehood in Trump’s statement is that the Delta smelt is “an essentially worthless fish.”

The Delta smelt is a key indicator species that demonstrates the health of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, the largest estuary on the West Coast of the Americas. This two-to-three-inch fish that smells like a cucumber is found only in the Delta.

It was once the most abundant fish in the Delta, but now is functionally extinct in the wild due to massive water exports to agribusiness and other factors, including invasive species, toxics and pollution, over the past several decades.   

The third falsehood Trump has been spreading is that water from Northern California hasn’t been allowed to “flow daily into many parts of California,” including Southern California. In fact, major South Coast reservoirs supplied by Delta water are currently anywhere from 77% to 85% of capacity. Pyramid Lake is at 85 percent, Castaic Lake is at 77 percent and Lake Perris is at 81 percent of capacity, according to California Department of Resources data.

The fourth falsehood is Trump’s claim that Newsom is denying Californians water in order to “protect” the smelt. In fact, the state and federal governments under both Republican and Democratic administrations have done a controversial job of “protecting” the fish over the past three decades, despite the smelt’s listing as “endangered” under both the state and federal Endangered Species Acts. Democrat and Republican governors have preferred to ship vast quantities of Delta water to corporate agribusiness and Southern California water agencies.

Most recently, the Department of Water Resources and Bureau of Reclamation actually cancelled fall flow protections for Delta smelt on Oct. 1, 2024, under intense pressure from Delta water exporters.

Current state and federal Endangered Species Act permits require the Department of Water Resources and Reclamation to release a pulse of water through the Delta to the San Francisco Bay in September and October to improve habitat conditions for the listed Delta smelt, according to environmental groups and fishing associations. This fall outflow requirement is only triggered in years when it is wetter than normal and is often referred to as “Fall X2.”

Yet the state and federal agencies suspended the “Fall X2” outflow this time, one of the only actions that could help the few remaining Delta smelt.

Delta smelt is functionally extinct in the wild

Zero smelt have been caught over the past six years in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Midwater Trawl Survey, despite the stocking of thousands of hatchery-raised smelt in the Delta by a consortium of state and federal agencies for the past three years. 

In the summer of 2024, a weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt.

“A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted fishery scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website.

Meanwhile, the other pelagic species collected in the survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continue their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect.

Between 1967 and 2020, the state’s Fall Midwater Trawl abundance indices for striped bass, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, American shad, splittail and threadfin shad have declined by 99.7%, 100%, 99.96%, 67.9%, 100%, and 95%, respectively, according to the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance.

The graphs in this CDFW memo graphically illustrate how dramatic the declines in fish populations have been over the years: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/…  

The collapse of Delta smelt and other pelagic fish populations is part of a larger ecosystem decline that includes Central Valley salmon populations.

Salmon populations have collapsed because of massive water diversions to agribusiness

The Sacramento River fall-run Chinook salmon population has been the driver of West Coast ocean salmon fisheries for decades. However, record low returns of salmon to Coleman National Fish Hatchery – critics say largely due to failed state and federal water policies – have resulted in the fishery disaster.

Salmon fishing on California ocean and river waters was closed in 2024 and 2023 due to the collapse of Sacramento River and Klamath River salmon populations.

Meanwhile, endangered winter and spring-Chinook salmon populations are moving closer and closer to extinction. Spawner escapement of endangered Sacramento River Winter Chinook in 2023 was estimated to be only 2,447 adults and 54 jacks, according to Pacific Fishery Management Council data.

Butte Creek, once the stronghold of spring-run Chinook, saw a record low 100 fish return to spawn last year and an even lower number of fish this year. Only 51 spring Chinooks were reported in the Butte Creek snorkel count and “probably less than 25” in the carcass count in 2024, according to Allen Harthorn, executive director of Friends of Butte Creek.  

The total number of salmon returning to the Sacramento and Klamath rivers and their tributaries this year won’t be made public until the data is posted on the Pacific Fishery Management Council’s website in late February 2025.

Critics say there is no doubt that the State Water Project and Central Valley Project, which they call the Delta “death pumps,” have exported so much water to Big Ag oligarchs that they’ve been the biggest killers of salmon, steelhead, Sacramento splittail and other fish species in California for decades.

Meanwhile, Restore the Delta is responding to the misinformation spread by Trump and his allies in corporate agribusiness.

“In light of the devastating wildfires raging in Los Angeles County, our hearts and unwavering support go out to the communities enduring these catastrophic events,” the group said. “As Californians face this crisis, it’s critical to combat misinformation that obscures the facts and misdirects blame … Recent statements falsely link California’s water policies to the tragic fires in Southern California. These claims, fact-checked by CNN and CalMatters, distort the truth about our state’s water management and firefighting resources.”

Restore the Delta added, “For the official record, reservoirs in Los Angeles are full. The challenges in combating these fires arise from extreme winds, arid brush conditions, and regional infrastructure constraints in Southern California — not water scarcity or environmental protections.”