Fact check: Trump says California is rationing water. Here’s what’s really going on

President Donald Trump had a lot to say about his efforts to fight off water rationing in California Wednesday before a cheering crowd of farmers in Bakersfield tired of seeing their water deliveries reduced to protect endangered fish.

But Trump’s claims — about how much of California’s water flows to the Pacific Ocean, and claims the state had set limits on daily water — left out key nuances that make his statements misleading.

What Trump said

“You’re rationing water when you have so much water,” Trump said, shortly before he finalized rules directing more water to be pumped to the San Joaquin Valley and Southern California. “Can you imagine a state being rationed when you have millions and millions and millions of gallons being poured into the Pacific?”

He said the state is rationing water and imposing 50-gallon limits as part of the state’s ‘‘misguided policies and management.”

He suggested there’s a linkage between a 50-gallon limit on water and the restrictions federal regulators had put on water pumped from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the massive estuary between San Francisco, Stockton and Sacramento.

Under new regulations he approved in Bakersfield, the president said Californians won’t have to worry about the state’s water rationing any more.

Water rationing in California?

In 2018, with California’s historic five-year drought ended but still fresh on everyone’s minds, Gov. Jerry Brown signed two bills that set water-efficiency standards for utilities to follow in the decades to come.

The bills say indoor water use needs to be reduced to an average of 55 gallons per person per day by 2023, declining to 50 gallons by 2030. Local water agencies will eventually have to meet these goals or they could get fined by the state up to $1,000 per day or $10,000 per day during an official drought emergency.

Conservative media personalities have seized on this numerous times as an example of how overzealous California liberals are imposing draconian limits on in-home water use. They note that the average American’s eight-minute shower uses 17 gallons, and an old top-loading washer will use approximately 40 to 45 gallons, putting Californians at risk of fines if they wash clothes and shower in the same day.

But state officials and environmentalists say the targets won’t be too hard to meet, and the water police won’t be issuing fines to individuals. The Pacific Institute estimates that Californians currently are using about 51 gallons, per person, each day. Those numbers will reduce even further as more people upgrade to low-flow showerheads and appliances. Modern high-efficiency washers, for example, only use as little as 14 gallons, according to the Alliance for Water Efficiency.

The laws, meanwhile, set general targets water districts will have to meet across their ratepayer bases, as part of a broader “water budget” strategy that accounts for both indoor and outdoor use. Water districts — not individual customers — could be fined if they don’t hit the targets.

Over the next two years, state regulators in consultation with local water agencies will set limits on how much water can be used to water lawns and fill swimming pools. Outdoor use accounts for the majority of total residential consumption in much of California.

What’s true about California’s water supply

Farm groups in the San Joaquin Valley, including Trump’s supporters at the Bakersfield appearance, have long complained about environmental restrictions that have forced cutbacks to their irrigation water supply.

At issue is how the water gets to them.

Decades ago, the state and federal governments built massive dams that capture river water and store it so that it can later be shipped to farms and cities.

A crucial bottleneck in that system is at the two arena-sized pumping stations at the south end of the Delta estuary that ship water south to millions of acres of San Joaquin Valley farmland and Southern California’s cities.

Humans take a remarkable amount of water from the ecosystem. On the Tuolumne River alone, for instance, as little as 11 percent of its natural flow reaches the ocean during dry years. The rest is stored behind dams or sent via canals to farms and cities like San Francisco.

All told, about half of California’s water is left in river channels to flow out under the Golden Gate Bridge to the Pacific Ocean, according to the Public Policy Institute of California. The rest is diverted to human uses. Some 40 percent goes to agriculture and the rest goes to cities.

Scientists say decades of people taking all that water from the ecosystem have caused Chinook salmon and other fish species like the Delta smelt to plummet toward extinction. In response, regulators have cut back water deliveries to farms and cities at certain times of the year, particularly during the last drought.

The rules Trump approved allow farmers to keep a greater share of their supplies — about 1 million acre-feet in wet years. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons. If not for Trump’s plan, more water than Folsom Lake can hold would flow out to sea.

So, yes, Trump is right that millions of gallons won’t be washing out to the ocean under the document he signed, but he missed key nuance about how much water humans already take out of the ecosystem.

This story was originally published February 19, 2020 at 5:09 PM with the headline "Fact check: Trump says California is rationing water. Here’s what’s really going on."