Sierra Club California Blasts Trump's Threat to Withhold Wildfire Aid from California

On Friday the Sierra Club California slammed President Donald Trump for threatening to withhold wildfire aid from California unless the state exports more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for  corporate agribusiness interests. 

Yesterday Trump visited the region of Los Angeles County hammered by the climate change-induced wildfires as new wildfires raged in San Diego County.

"I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump said in an interview with Fox’s Sean Hannity on Wednesday, repeating agribusiness talking points  — and showing his complete lack of the slightest knowledge about California water resources.

“President Trump’s threat to withhold wildfire aid from California unless the state releases more water from the Delta is a shameful political stunt that will threaten the safety and livelihood of millions of Californians,” said Caty Wagner, Sierra Club California Water Campaign Manager, in a statement. “This comes on the heels of Trump’s Executive Order urging agencies to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which would cause the unsustainable depletion of water from an already failing ecosystem to be used for mostly large-scale agricultural purposes.”

However, it is not just Trump who is pushing for more exports.

“Trump’s water policy is closely aligned with Governor Newsom’s, who wants to promote the $20 billion Delta Tunnel to draw even more water from the Delta. These policies would have severe consequences for local Delta communities, Tribes, fishermen, and endangered species,” Wagner argued.

“Sierra Club California strongly opposes Trump and Newsom’s environmentally destructive water policy, and we’ll be fighting to stop them in the courts and at the relevant state agencies. Sierra Club California and our allies will continue to push for adoption of local, sustainable water sources that will create shovel ready local jobs while protecting the Delta’s communities and threatened ecosystems,” she concluded.  

Trump issues executive order to shop more water to Big Ag

On Jan. 20, his first day in office for his second term, Trump issued an executive order entitled, “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California,” repeating many of the falsehoods about California water and the Delta smelt that he stated in a post on Truth Social earlier this month.

”I hereby direct the Secretary of Commerce and Secretary of the Interior, in consultation with the heads of other departments and agencies of the United States as necessary, to immediately restart the work from my first Administration by the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and other agencies to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply,” the order states.

Read the order here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/putting-people-over-fish-stopping-radical-environmentalism-to-provide-water-to-southern-california/ 

This memo amounts to an outright attack on recreational and commercial fishing communities, California Tribes, conservationists, Delta communities, family farmers and businesses fighting for the restoration of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

It repeats the canard of "putting people over fish" that corporate agribusiness has been pushing for many years, completely denying the fact that the California recreational and commercial fishing industry and Delta businesses desperately need the water for their livelihoods that depend on healthy fisheries. The order also denies the crucial role that the Sacramento River, its tributaries and the Delta play in the culture and livelihood of California Indian Tribes.

Recreational and commercial salmon fishing on California ocean waters and recreational salmon fishing on California rivers has been closed for the past two years, putting thousands out of work, due to the collapse of the Sacramento and Klamath River fall-run Chinook salmon populations. The collapse is largely due to massive water diversions from the Sacramento River and the Delta for corporate agribusiness on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California water agencies.

On the Klamath River, a significant amount of water from the Trinity River, the Klamath’s largest tributary, is diverted over to the Sacramento River through a tunnel in the Trinity Mountains to be used to irrigate crops on drainage impaired land in the San Joaquin Valley. Due to the Klamath salmon fishery collapse, the Yurok and Hoopa Valley Indian Tribes were allowed only a small amount of subsistence and ceremonial fish for their use over the past two years.  

On Jan. 21, salmon restoration and Delta groups responded to Trump’s memo: www.dailykos.com/...

Delta Smelt absent from CDFW’s fall survey for seventh year in a row

Trump is making the visit to California at a time when the San Francisco Bay-Delta ecosystem is in its worst-ever crisis.

Zero Delta Smelt, an indicator species that has been villainized by Donald Trump and his corporate agribusiness allies for supposedly being a “worthless fish” while blaming the 2 to 3 inch fish for the Los Angeles Fires, have been caught in the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Fall Midwater Trawl Survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for the seventh year in a row.

It is significant that zero Delta smelt were caught in the survey despite the release of tens of thousands of hatchery-raised Delta smelt into the Delta over the past few years by the state and federal governments.

“The 2024 abundance index was 0 and continues the trend of no catch in the FMWT since 2017,” reported  Taylor Rohlin, CDFW Environmental Scientist Bay Delta Region in a Jan. 2 memo to Erin Chappell, Regional Manager Bay Delta Region: nrm.dfg.ca.gov/...

“No Delta Smelt were collected from any stations during our survey months of September-December. While FMWT did not catch any Delta Smelt, it does not mean there were no smelt present, but the numbers are very low and below the effective detection threshold by most sampling methods,” she wrote.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has conducted the Fall Midwater Trawl Survey (FMWT) to index the fall abundance of pelagic (open water) fishes annually since 1967 (except 1974 and 1979), Rohlin stated.

Why is this survey so important?  It’s because “the FMWT equipment and methods have remained consistent since the survey’s inception, allowing the indices to be compared across time,” Rohlin wrote. “These relative abundance indices are not intended to approximate population sizes; however, indices reflect general patterns in population change (Polansky et al. 2019).”

Other surveys last year also reveal the functional extinction of Delta smelt in the wild. A weekly survey by the US Fish and Wildlife Service  targeting Delta smelt caught only one smelt in the summer of 2024. “A late April IEP juvenile fish survey (the 20-mm Survey) caught several juvenile Delta smelt in the same area,” noted scientist Tom Cannon in his blog on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance website: calsport.org/...   

In a recent post on Truth Social, President Donald Trump falsely claimed that Governor Gavin 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.”

I break down the four falsehoods that Trump made in this post here: www.dailykos.com/...

To summarize, the Delta Smelt is definitely not a “worthless fish.” In fact, 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. The 2 to 3 inch fish that smells like a cucumber is found only in the Delta.

It was once the most abundant fish in the Delta, numbering in the millions, 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 significance of the Delta smelt’s role in the Bay-Delta Estuary can’t be overstated. ”Delta Smelt are the thread that ties the Delta together with the river system,” said Caleen Sisk, Chief of the Winnemem Wintu Tribe. “We all should understand how that affects all the water systems in the state. They are the irreplaceable thread that holds the Delta system together with Chinook salmon.”

Other Delta fish populations decline dramatically

The other fish species collected in the 2024 fall survey — striped bass, longfin smelt, Sacramento splittail and threadfin shad — continued their dramatic decline since 1967 when the State Water Project went into effect. Only the threadfin shad showed an increase from the last year’s index — and the population is still at just a fraction of its former abundance.

The survey uses an “abundance index,” a relative measure of abundance, to document general patterns in population change.

The 2024 abundance index for striped bass, an introduced gamefish, was 136, representing a 49% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 175 for longfin smelt, a native fish species, representing a 62% decrease from last year’s index.

The index was 577 for threadfin shad, an introduced forage fish, representing a 12% increase from last year’s index.

The index for American shad, an introduced gamefish, was 1341, representing a 45% decrease from last year’s index.

The index for Sacramento splittail, a native minnow species, was 0, with 0 fish caught.

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 survey was released as Governor Gavin Newsom has been pushing three projects — the Delta Tunnel, Sites Reservoir and the Voluntary Agreements — that fish advocates say would hasten the extinction of Delta smelt, longfin smelt, Sacramento winter-run and spring-run Chinook populations, Central Valley steelhead and green sturgeon.