Does Donald Trump truly believe the nonsense he spouts about California water — the mythical “valve” connecting the state to Canada, or the imagined “half-pipe” that stands ready to soak the Los Angeles area?
California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) is pushing back on President Trump’s recent claim that the U.S. military entered the state and “turned on the water” in the wake of devastating wildfires that left lasting damage in the southern part of the state.
Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Chair of the Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water and Wildlife, announced that he secured several top water infrastructure priorities for California through the unanimous Senate passage of the Thomas R. Carper Water Resources Development Act (WRDA) of 2024. The legislation includes provisions Padilla fought for to address the Tijuana River transboundary sewage crisis, to invest in salmon recovery and habitat restoration around the Sacramento River Basin, and to provide the Army Corps of Civil Engineers with enhanced drought and flood control authorities.
The Senate and House of Representatives have each passed their respective versions of WRDA, which will now be conferenced to produce final legislation.
“There have not been enough investments into the water infrastructure since it was constructed. In 1977, 63% of the capital budget went to fund infrastructure repairs and by 2017 9% was going toward water, infrastructure and repairs. That is the biggest reason why we’re seeing issues on our existing infrastructure and more investment needs to be made now before the results become catastrophic,” said Burke, director of engineering at Inland Empire Utilities Agency.
The Rainbow Municipal Water District will be paying for $10 million of capital projects and equipment with a loan.
A 5-0 Rainbow board vote April 23 approved a resolution authorizing an installment purchase agreement with U.S. Bank to finance the infrastructure and equipment. The loan will begin as a line of credit with a variable interest rate before converting to a 4.7% fixed rate for the remainder of the ten-year period.
The Delta Tunnel proposal exemplifies California’s political dysfunction. It will probably never get built, but it promises to dominate all discussions of major state and federal spending on water infrastructure for the next decade, preventing any other big ideas from getting the attention they merit.
“The story of Los Angeles is the story of water,” remarks Peter Massey, TreePeople’s project manager of Water Equity Programs, noting how California’s modern history is so deeply intertwined with water issues.
It’s an arcane system of water law that dates back to the birth of California — an era when 49ers used sluice boxes and water cannons to scour gold from Sierra Nevada foothills and when the state government promoted the extermination of Native people to make way for white settlers.
Today, this antiquated system of water rights still governs the use of the state’s supplies, but it is now drawing scrutiny like never before.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced more than $609 million in capitalization grants, through State Revolving Funds (SRFs), to California for water infrastructure improvements. The grants will supplement the state’s annual base SRF of $144 million. The capitalization grants mark the first significant distribution of water infrastructure investments to California following passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The law allocates more than $50 billion toward water infrastructure.
This week marks the 50th Anniversary of the 1972 Clean Water Act, which, among other things, made it a legal requirement to clean up sewage to certain standards before dumping it into rivers or the ocean.
