I was invited to speak with Grant Stinchfield on Real America’s Voice about how California’s water failures endanger the whole Interior West.
Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) is calling out California Governor Gavin Newsom for failing his citizens and neighboring Colorado River states with abysmal water policy that continues to worsen drought conditions across the West and threaten the national food supply.
“The system is now becoming very, very stressed because California has not kept up with the infrastructure demands and needs of its citizens,” Hageman told Fox News Digital. “Pinedale, Wyoming, may be a long way removed from Southern California, but when there are calls on the river and when there are demands that we reduce the amount of water that we are able to use in order to meet a demand downstream, that isn’t fair.”
More Western leaders are calling out California for abusing Colorado River water deliveries while neglecting its own infrastructure.
Leading water policy expert Edward Ring says California is the one state in the West where drought is a “political choice.”
“California’s negligence harms every state that borders the Colorado River—Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Arizona,” he writes. “Instead of spending the billions it would take to restore the delta so additional millions of acre-feet can be withdrawn during big winter storms, and instead of investing in desalination plants, urban wastewater recycling, and runoff capture for aquifer recharge both in rural and urban areas, California continues to assert senior water rights to pull four million acre-feet per year out of the Colorado River. It can’t go on.”
Ring points out that California has more than 800 miles of coastline, where seawater desalination plants could easily be built. Instead, officials are draining aquifers in the San Joaquin Valley and neglecting the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Not only has the state refused to follow the wishes of its voters by building new water projects using funds designated for this purpose by Prop 1 passed in 2014, it is working to remove what critical water infrastructure is currently in place. The Klamath Dam removals were completed in 2024. Now the state is supporting plans to remove the Potter Valley dams that supply water to 750,000 residents on the North Coast.
Gavin Newsom has boasted about both dam destruction projects as part of his “salmon strategy.”
California’s water infrastructure is essentially the same today, with 40 million residents, as it was in the 1960s, when there were only 16 million.
Hageman says it’s an issue that concerns the entire nation.
“California could grow almost all the food we need in the United States, but they’ve really decimated their ag industry because they’ve taken irrigation water away from their ag industry,” Hageman said. “Food independence is a national security issue. We do not want to become food dependent on Mexico or Central America or bringing all of our food in from other countries. We have the resources to grow healthy, high-quality food right here while also protecting our environment.”
She likens the extreme environmental groups that oppose dams and desalination as akin to “flat-Earthers.”
“They’re very backwards people. I kind of look at them like flat-Earthers,” Hageman said. “They ignore the fact that humans are also part of the natural environment, and they ignore the benefits of what we can create by building this much-needed infrastructure.”
Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the U.S. and formed by Hoover Dam on the main stem of the Colorado River, faces its own crisis. The lake hit its lowest level on record in August and has kept falling—endangering the roughly 20 million people who rely on it for water supply.
Experts predict water shortages in the near future, with AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Chad Merrill telling the Daily Mail that years of drought has driven water levels to “the tipping point.”
California officials say that the state has reduced its Colorado River use, and currently uses less water from the Colorado River than at any point since 1949.
“Any long-term solution must share responsibility fairly across all seven states in recognition of the new reality of the Colorado River,” said California Governor Gavin Newsom.
I forgot to add one more comment —the dams removed on the Klamath supplied water to no one . Not one drop—they were hydro dams that gradually became less and less efficient.
The discussion about California not living up to its responsibilities to feed the nation by failing to develop its water resources—well, let’s tell the whole story. The water used to grow the exported volume of almonds, pistachios and alfalfa totals…a little less than 6 million acre feet. 1.5 million acre-feet more than California’s allocation of Colorado River water.