President Donald Trump on Monday appeared to clarify comments he made last summer that led many in the Pacific Northwest to fear he would attempt to divert Columbia River water to Southern California.
The new details came in an executive order — titled “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California” — released just hours after he was inaugurated.
Last summer at a fundraiser outside Los Angeles, then-candidate Trump said “in order to protect a certain little tiny fish called the smelt, they send millions and millions of gallons of water out to the Pacific Ocean” instead of using it for agriculture or fighting fires by dampening the forest — an expensive and scientifically impractical idea.
The 6-minute comments caused controversy partly because he didn’t cite which river he was proposing to divert. And while he went on to describe details that aligned closely with Northern California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, he also said the water comes “pouring down from the north, with the snow caps and Canada.”