The California Department of Water Resources has shot down President Donald Trump’s latest attempt to play the hero during the devastating Los Angeles wildfires.
“The United States Military just entered the Great State of California and, under Emergency Powers, TURNED ON THE WATER flowing abundantly from the Pacific Northwest, and beyond,” Trump wrote late Monday on his social media platform Truth Social. “The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER.”
Within hours, the DWP refuted the president’s statement in a post on the social media platform X.
“The military did not enter California,” it wrote. “The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
Trump had repeatedly accused California Gov. Gavin Newsom of hampering the fight to contain devastating wildfires in Los Angeles by holding back California’s water supplies—a claim Newsom and state departments have repeatedly denied, the Los Angeles Times reported. Trump also clashed with California water officials during his first term over environmental policies meant to protect endangered marine life.
The last of the wildfires were finally doused over the weekend when rainstorms ended Los Angeles’ record-breaking dry spell, bringing all five blazes to more than 95 percent containment. The fires killed 29 people and destroyed more than 16,250 homes and other structures.
![In this aerial view taken from a helicopter, burned homes are seen from above during the Palisades fire in Los Angeles county, California on Jan. 9, 2025. Swaths of the United States' second-largest city lay in ruins, with smoke blanketing the sky and an acrid smell pervading almost every building.](https://www.thedailybeast.com/resizer/v2/G7YAJGFW5FARJNXQTD7JMEQM6U.jpg?auth=dad8899b8b6a5a2019fed7da69f1eda77da2f65dc12523e99346cc834e50caaa&width=800&height=482)
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to “maximize” water deliveries in California and “override” state policies if necessary by pumping more water to the Los Angeles area from Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.
One of California’s two main aqueduct systems, the Central Valley Project, is federally managed, while its State Water Project is managed by the state.
The Army Corps of Engineers manages 17 of the CVP dams. That might be why Trump invoked the military, even though troops didn’t exactly storm the California Republic—and even though the Corps turned off its own pumps before bringing them back online, according to the state.
The reservoirs are at all-time highs, according to the Times, but pumping the water south wouldn’t have done anything for the wildfires. As its name suggests, the CVP transports water to farmland in the Central Valley and ends in Bakersfield, more than 100 miles away from Greater Los Angeles.
But residents of Palisades, one of the neighborhoods destroyed by the fires, were outraged earlier this month when they learned a reservoir built in the 1960s in Santa Ynez Canyon to protect their homes from wildfires was offline and empty when the blaze erupted, according to the Los Angeles Times, leading to several lawsuits.
It’s not clear though whether the reservoir—which was shut down about a year ago for repairs—would have made a serious difference, since gale-force winds made it impossible for planes and helicopters to fight the fires, the Times reported.
Experts say municipal water systems just aren’t equipped to deal with the perfect storm of conditions that drove the L.A. wildfires out of control. The rain that fell over the weekend provided a much-needed respite, but so far it hasn’t been enough to end the fire season entirely.
But Trump wasn’t going to let any of that stand in his way of claiming he’d saved the state from itself.
“Enjoy the water, California!!!” his post concluded.