Decision to dump water from Tulare County lakes altered after confusing locals
44 comments
·February 1, 2025stouset
dylan604
Unfortunately, if anyone expected anything different than utter chaos from this administration then they live in a different reality. It only sounds harsh because it's true.
onlyrealcuzzo
Small government at its smallest.
cozzyd
Government so small you can drown it in lake Tulare
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yongjik
Hell, after the long long first week of Trump, I'd be relieved if the worst they did at any given day was trying to flood some Californian streams.
stouset
The worst isn’t flooding some streams, it’s the crop failure from lack of water during the summer thanks to emptying the reservoirs over winter.
This is active sabotage of the nation’s food supply.
I can’t wait to find out how this will be blamed on Biden.
hipadev23
That’s precisely the plan. So when we have crop problems this summer due to lack of available labor they can instead point to “irresponsible water management by California”
cozzyd
The crops had too much DEI.
AlotOfReading
No, that will provide justification to divert the 60% of "environmental water" flow sustaining natural wetlands and fish populations into agricultural usage, an issue central valley farmers have been unhappy about for years.
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bagels
All of the reservoirs were and are above the average level for this time of year during the fires and now, including those in Southern California.
https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain
This accomplishes nothing useful, unless they plan to irrigate the wilderness to keep the brush green year round (of course, there is certainly not enough water for that).
russdill
Apparently we just need to water the tumbleweeds and keep them green. I wish I were making this up.
jeffbee
Neither of the reservoirs in question are on that graphic, FYI. Both of these lakes are empty and generally would be in January. Which is why combined outflows of 2500 cubic feet per second is extraordinary. https://www.spk-wc.usace.army.mil/plots/california.html?name...
mikestew
Follow up story: Trump’s emergency water order responsible for water dump from Tulare County lakes
https://sjvwater.org/trumps-emergency-water-order-responsibl...
Terr_
> Tulare County water managers were perplexed and frustrated, noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
So... Trump just wanted Hugest Most Beautiful Water Moving Numbers so he could brag to his supporters, and he ordered it done no matter how useless or harmful it would be?
Oof. I'm remembering that 2018 letter [0] where some anonymous staff sought sympathy from the American public for their unsung work keeping Trump from Doing Something Crooked. (I still feel they were actually making it worse in the long run.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Part_of_the_Resistance_In...
mikeyouse
This is going to be so much worse than the first term. It's only been 11 days and just nonstop chaos already, except the 'sensible' Republicans don't seem to care any more.
9283409232
There are no sensible Republicans. They are all complicit. Even for the Democrats, it feels like Bernie, AOC, and Haskins are the only ones really fighting in Congress.
userbinator
noting both physical and legal barriers that make it virtually impossible for Tulare County river water to be used for southern California fires.
Trump doesn't care about legal barriers, but he may be a little more convinced about physical ones.
Chris2048
> The reservoir may belong to the federal government, but the water is ours
So, what are the rules regarding water ownership?
jpollock
https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/waterrights/board_info/faqs.h...
It wasn't until 2012 that you were allowed to capture RAIN that fell on your roof.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...
prawn
Was there a period earlier in Californian history where it was the norm, or has it always been discouraged?
In South Australia which is similarly dry to parts of California, newly built houses are required to have rainwater tanks installed and plumbed to the house (e.g., to flush a toilet, for example).
daveguy
Got a reference for the legislation that required a permit to begin with, or is your bill reference just a clarification to make the lack of a permit requirement explicit? Seems like this bill is just a clarification and granting explicit permission for landscaping contractors to install rainwater catchment systems like they already had permission to install hot tubs, patios, pools, and all the other things listed.
ks2048
So some guys are sitting around managing a dam and the President just calls and tells them to open it up? So, he can say he made some water flow in California? What??
Everyone in this chain of command should be fired and Trump should get the 25th amendment.
(I know that won't happen... we'll be on to the next scandal tomorrow, then the next, ad infinitum...)
metamet
This, alongside side the footage and mic of him signing EOs he neither wrote nor know what they are, really make it seem like they're just keeping him occupied.
timewizard
California Reservoir Status as maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers:
https://www.spk-wc.usace.army.mil/fcgi-bin/midnight.py?days=...
1 acre foot is 43560 feet^3, or 1233 m^3 of water.
runarberg
acre foot is one of the funnier American units out there. It is defined as a foot × a chain (66 feet) × a furlong (660 feet). So you get this weird rectangular cuboid with very small height and a very long length.
m³ is already a pretty hard to visualize unit (unless you are used to visualize volume) but acre feet is just about impossible.
kadoban
As a big proponent of the metric system, acre feet are pretty reasonable. An acre is a decent sized plot of land for a house in the ~dense country, you can easily picture it. Flood that to a foot and you have an acre foot.
A single m^3 is fairly easy to visualize, but once you get to higher amounts it's pretty meaningless.
db48x
No, an acrefoot is defined as a foot × an acre. Acres are a unit of area, and can be any shape. They’re especially useful for lakes because you generally know the area that the lake covers and measuring the depth is really easy. If your lake covers 1234 acres and the water rises by a two and a half feet, then obviously you have gained 1234 × 2.5 = 3085 acrefeet of water. It’s designed to be useful without requiring anyone to do any unit conversions at all.
rendaw
Firstly I don't think gp meant it literally, but conversationally as in: the definition decomposes to foot x chain x furlong.
Acres can be any shape, but gp is correct that acres were originally defined as chain x furlong (per wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furlong ). They're also correct that it's a weird combination of disparate sizes which doesn't lend itself to visualization.
cesarb
> m³ is already a pretty hard to visualize unit (unless you are used to visualize volume)
I don't think it's that hard; just think of a standard 1000L water tank (which is, in my experience, the most common size).
ggm
Plastic Tanks being imported from metric economies for sale in imperial measurement economy?
It's 264 US gallons. So presumably sold as a 250 gallon tank with a bit of extra headroom.
BobbyTables2
That’s hilarious. As I read your first sentence, I thought “if only it used furlongs”…. And it does (;->
timewizard
> a chain (66 feet) × a furlong (660 feet).
That's a furrow width x a furrow length. I imagine our agrarian roots have something to do with this. Then you can easily find tables for expected food production from 1 acre of your crops.
> weird rectangular cuboid
A good 1:10 crop row.
> m³ is already a pretty hard to visualize unit
1000 1L bottles doesn't seem that hard to visualize.
jijji
[flagged]
fzeroracer
Wrong on all accounts. Open a map.
jeffbee
How is Altadena going to fight fire with water from the Tule?
Buy an atlas.
dylan604
As an aside from the actual article, the website has some interesting class names. Using a class name of "force_consent" just sounds like something that to anyone with morals would reconsider the use of that name.
It’s wonderful that completely uninformed politicians at the national level are making low-level decisions like this now. What could go wrong?