Environmental groups sue to stop Trump's water diversions in California

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- Imagine how shocked you'd be if a neighbor just marched into your home and turned on every shower and sink in the house. That's how some California water managers might have felt last year, when President Trump ordered the Army Corp of Engineers to open-up flows from the part of California's vast water system that's controlled by the Federal Government.

The surprise diversion flowed into reservoirs in the Central Valley and seemed designed to make good on promises laid out in a presidential memorandum, "Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California." Trump backed it up with an executive order and what's now known as Action 5. A plan for the Bureau of Reclamation to divert more water to farmers, independent of State Water officials.

Jon Rosenfield, Ph.D., is Science Director with the nonprofit, San Francisco Baykeeper.

"So that's what action five does, is sort of, enshrines their previous violations in a new, set of operations, which again, they didn't consult with the federal regulatory agencies over. They just said, hey, we're going to- we're going to do this," says Rosenfield.

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Several Environmental groups, including San Francisco Baykeeper and the Center for Biological Diversity are now suing, claiming the Action 5 diversions violate the Endangered Species Act and will harm fish populations including chinook salmon.

Harrison Beck is a staff attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity.

"And the Bureau has failed to comply with these requirements. And we believe that they're going to continue to fail to do so, in part as a result of Trump's recent executive order on this issue," Beck argues.

First it helps to understand that two massive aqueducts carry water south from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, one managed by the state, the other by the Federal Government. For decades their operations have been tightly coordinated.

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And some believe a tug of war now could come at the worst possible time. With concerns about an unpredictable snowpack in the Sierra, dwindling water supplies from the Colorado river, and an expected update to the Bay/Delta plan, which helps ensure that enough fresh water flows into San Francisco Bay.

"And there are folks who just don't care about those things. And I like to tell them these are just messengers of worse things to come," says Rosenfield.

All centered on a state water system, that could become even more of a battleground in the upcoming months. And with courts potentially deciding who gets to control the tap.

The Trump administration isn't the only one facing backlash over potential water diversion from the Delta. A coalition of Native American groups is also filing formal objections to Governor Newsom's plans to divert water around the Delta to Southern California through a 45-mile tunnel project.