In blaming the Los Angeles wildfires on a small fish, Trump is signaling big legal fights to come
The delta smelt is functionally extinct. Diverting more water for California farms could seal that fate, and prompt fierce litigation.
As wildfires scorched Los Angeles this past week, President-elect Donald Trump identified an unusual scapegoat to blame for the carnage: an inches-long, nearly-translucent fish that is functionally extinct.
The connection was made in a social media post, where the Republican seized on reports of failing water hydrants to make a political jab at California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat.
Trump claimed, falsely, that Newsom had refused to allow Northern California water to be diverted south via the state’s complex system of canals and aqueducts so more water would be available for things like fighting fires. “He wanted to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt,” he said, adding that, now, “the ultimate price is being paid.”
The remarks pull the curtain back on what has become a long-running political and legal fight over the delta smelt — a fish that, if you were to look for it now in its native Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta today, you likely wouldn’t find. They also signal that a second Trump presidency is likely to pick right back up where the first left off trying to curtail the smelt’s protections, and in the process funnel more water to thirsty farms run by some of his most fervent supporters.
But one thing’s for certain, experts say: that fight has little to do with wildfires.
“The delta smelt as the main cause of water shortages in California is a bit of fiction that Mr Trump has been promoting for years,” Peter Moyle, a biologist at the University of California, Davis, told Landmark.
Moyle said there is no question that there is intense competition over California’s water resources. But, since large amounts of Northern California water are already being diverted, Moyle said “the fish are losing.”
A small fish vs. one of the most complex water delivery systems in the world
The delta smelt is a vanishingly small fish that is endemic to the San Francisco Estuary, which runs from the Sierra Nevada Mountains through to the strait of the Golden Gate and helps provide freshwater for millions of people.
While there are numerous threats to the fish — which today lives exclusively in human-run hatcheries — a major contributor to its decline is California’s Central Valley Project, a massive system of dams, canals and other infrastructure that was completed in the 1960s and diverts water from the estuary for a variety of uses including farmland irrigation.
California’s State Water Project, which was built in the 1960s and 1970s and likewise diverts water throughout the state, is also viewed as a key threat.
Those systems threaten the fish through pumps that suck them in and kill them. And the systems’ diversion reduces critical freshwater supplies in their habitat — which has contributed to declining salmon populations, too.
While devastating for aquatic life and communities along the Delta that also rely on its freshwater, the two projects have had major benefits for California broadly. The State Water Project helped provide freshwater that Los Angeles needed to grow into the massive city it is today. The Central Valley Project meanwhile helped California become an agricultural powerhouse.
But Ashley Overhouse, a water policy analyst at the advocacy group Defenders of Wildlife, told Landmark that any low-flow at the hydrants in L.A. — the most populous city in a state where climate change is making water scarcer and wildfires more severe — shouldn’t be blamed on relatively small protections for fish.
“Conflating our complex water management system and the decline of the Delta ecosystem with catastrophic wildfires is not only incredibly inappropriate, it is also dangerous,” she said.
A nearly decade-old grudge, and legal fight
The devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, which have caused an estimated tens of billions of dollars in damage and killed at least two dozen people, are not the first time Trump has found a reason to evoke the fight over the tiny delta smelt, which is classified as endangered by both the U.S. and state governments.
The former and future president has slammed efforts to conserve the fish since at least 2016, when he mentioned the fish on the primary trail in an apparent effort to attract California Republicans. He ultimately won that contest with over 74% of the vote.
Since then, Trump has focused on the fish frequently on the campaign trail out West to highlight his belief that Democratic politicians in California are mismanaging the state’s scarce water supplies and as a symbol of his distaste for environmental regulations.
During his first term, Trump made good on campaign promises to help Central Valley farmers, and moved to lift Endangered Species Act restrictions protecting the delta smelt. Doing so would have allowed more water to be diverted to farms in Central California, and benefited a wealthy group of California farmers whose water district had previously employed Trump’s second Interior secretary, David Bernhardt, as a lobbyist.
The move was quickly challenged in court by environmental groups, leading to an injunction in May 2020 that required the water systems to be managed consistent with a 2009 plan that was in place when Trump took over.
After President Joe Biden replaced Trump in the White House, his administration began a review of the water management system and in late December announced new rules — which environmental advocates say isn’t quite as protective as they would like, but is better than the plan originally put forward by Trump.
John Buse, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Landmark that Trump’s latest focus on the delta smelt shows that the incoming president has that water fight on his mind as he prepares to take the oath of office.
He expects Trump will revise the just-announced rules, setting up an inevitable fresh round of legal fights.
“I think there is a signal there that, early in the Trump administration, he's going to attempt to meddle in these state water issues,” he said.