Trump's quiet truce on California water

Politico

6 hours ago

With help from Eric He and Alex Nieves
NOT SO SPLASHY: President Donald Trump promised to break California's water rules wide open. So far, he's mostly working within them.
Five months after Trump issued a pair of directives for federal agencies to overturn state and Biden-era rules limiting water deliveries, the federal government has done no such thing. Instead, it's quietly increasing water flows following the very rules Trump once railed against — at least for now.
It's a sharp contrast to Trump's otherwise confrontational posture toward California and climate policy. In just the last week, he rescinded the state's authority to phase out gas-powered vehicles and sent the National Guard into Los Angeles over Newsom's objections.
It's also a sharp contrast to Trump's campaign rhetoric, when he vowed to force Gov. Gavin Newsom to reverse a lawsuit blocking his first-term effort to loosen environmental protections in the state's main water hub, the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
But Trump seems mollified now, declaring victory over the state at a White House event last week. The president brought up the familiar theme of water flowing out to the Pacific Ocean instead of being used in farms and cities, called it 'ridiculous' and declared of the water: 'We got them to take it now.'
What's changed? For one, California had a wet winter, which tends to smooth over political differences. And the Trump administration suffered an early headline-grabbing debacle in February when it dumped summer irrigation water from Central Valley dams in a misguided effort to send it to fires in Los Angeles.
Newsom has also aligned himself more with Trump on water, as when he jilted Delta-area Democrats last month in pushing to expedite a tunnel to move more supplies from Northern to Southern California. More substantively, some of the water districts that might be expected to agitate for Trump to overturn Biden-era water rules concede that they actually allow more deliveries than Trump's version.
'Our goal really is to try and implement some of the adaptive management and other actions that are in the [Biden-era rules] that provide some flexibility to benefit water supply and the fishery as well,' said Thaddeus Bettner, the executive director of the Sacramento River Settlement Contractors, a group of municipal and agricultural water districts in the northern Central Valley.
So even though Trump's January directives gave federal officials the option to redo the Biden-era rules, they haven't done that so far — avoiding both lawsuits and negative headlines.
Environmental groups in the sensitive Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, however, aren't buying it. They say the Trump administration is still violating endangered species rules, pointing to examples when federal officials pumped more water out of the Delta than state officials, killing or injuring protected species of salmon and trout in the process.
'Reclamation's behavior is cause for extreme concern for the health of the Bay-Delta and for the communities and people who care about and depend on this ecosystem,' the groups wrote in a letter last month to state water officials. (Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson Mary Lee Knecht said the agency 'continues to operate the Central Valley Project to maximize water supply and hydropower in full compliance' with the Biden-era rules. The White House did not provide a comment by publication time.)
There are a couple opportunities coming up for Trump to make more of a splash. He has yet to nominate a Bureau of Reclamation commissioner, who could sway the agency one way or the other.
And on Tuesday, state and federal lawyers are due to update a judge on whether they want to continue the lawsuit Newsom lodged against Trump in 2020.
Water agencies that have been mostly laudatory of Trump are still restive. Westlands Water District's general manager, Allison Febbo, called the Trump administration's latest projected increase in summer water allocations, from 50 to 55 percent, 'disappointing' given that reservoirs are filled to the brim.
'The operations quagmire that has contributed to the self-inflicted water crisis we have in this state, and reconfirmed by the Biden administration before leaving office, are still wreaking havoc on the water projects,' Johnny Amaral, chief of external affairs at the Friant Water Authority, said in a text message. 'Every minute that goes by is a lost opportunity to end the crisis, and the clock is ticking.' — CvK
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SENATE SOFTENING: The Senate Finance Committee on Monday scaled back some of House Republicans' sharpest cuts to clean energy tax credits in their version of the Republican budget reconciliation bill, POLITICO's Kelsey Tamborrino, Josh Siegel and James Bikales report.
The bill would soften the House's onerous 60-day timeline for starting construction of wind and solar projects, but would still phase their tax credits out by 2028 — more quickly than for nuclear, geothermal and hydropower projects.
It also appears to omit language that would create new registration fees on electric vehicles and hybrids of $250 and $100, respectively, as Sam Ogozalek writes.
SUPPORT FOR WHO?: The Imperial Valley is still years away from having a full-fledged lithium extraction industry, but tensions between community organizers and local officials are already high.
A California Energy Commission workshop on Friday to discuss transportation needs for supporting a new industry in one of the state's most remote and impoverished regions at times got testy, as organizers raised concerns that residents around the Salton Sea — who live near large lithium deposits that could hold the key to California's battery storage needs — are an afterthought.
'We need paved and well-maintained roads to access our job sites, reliable public infrastructure and public transportation that not only serves industry, but also the workers and residents in the county,' said Jacob Rodriguez, the Imperial County Organizer for Jobs to Move America.
Controlled Thermal Resources, Berkshire Hathaway Energy and EnergySource Minerals are attempting to extract lithium directly from hot water pumped from deep underground, with the goal of opening commercial-scale facilities in 2027 or 2028. The companies and state and local officials say that can only happen if roads, bridges and railroad infrastructure are improved to handle the influx of heavy-duty trucks.
Local groups like Comité Cívico del Valle, which sued CTR and Imperial County over approval of one project's environmental mitigation plan, say they're supportive of the industry, but that residents have not received assurances they'll benefit from new economic activity.
'I'm sorry to say this, but the county has turned their back on the north end,' said April Ochoa, a community organizer with Comité Cívico del Valle, arguing that nearby cities like Bombay Beach and Niland lack basic public transportation and health care.
Imperial County Supervisor Ryan Kelley, who attended the workshop at Imperial Valley College, took that criticism personally.
'I'm sorry you took that into a personal attack on me,' Kelley said. 'I've answered your calls, and I've done things to help you and the town of Niland. So I'm injured. I'm sorry you feel that way.' — AN
LABOR SOUNDS OFF: The fight over school HVAC funding is heating up.
A broad coalition that includes labor, environmental and education groups is blasting Newsom's budget proposal to shift money intended for school energy upgrades to broader energy conservation programs.
Newsom, who last fall issued an executive order aimed at addressing rising electric bills, included trailer bill language in his May budget plan that would target the more than $190 million remaining funding in the CalSHAPE program, which funds upgrades to heating, air conditioning and ventilation systems in schools.
Lawmakers have targeted the pot of money before, most recently earlier this year, when Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris sought to send the money back to ratepayers as a bill credit. Newsom's proposal would divert the funding to grid reliability programs instead.
United Steelworkers, the California Labor Federation, the California Teachers Association, the Sierra Club and other groups contended in a letter Monday that the proposal will 'cause a wide variety of harmful and potentially fatal conditions among students and education workers.' Mitch Steiger, legislative advocate for the California Federation of Teachers, called the proposal 'unconscionable' and that there are few funding alternatives for schools to access HVAC repairs. — EH
CAUTION, TURNS AHEAD: Six months ago, Congress pumped $8 billion into emergency road repairs — just in time for the Los Angeles fires to add to the growing backlog of federal disaster costs. Now, Trump's budget proposal would allocate just $100 million.
It's a feast-and-famine pattern local officials have been used to since at least the 1970s, writes Mike Lee of POLITICO's E&E News. But with the pace of disasters increasing, cities and environmental advocates are arguing the repair program needs more muscular and sustainable funding.
'With the number of unprecedented disasters happening, Congress should be focused on refilling our emergency funding,' the National League of Cities said in a statement.
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