On Jan. 27, 2025, a post (archived) by U.S. President Donald Trump on his Truth Social network led to claims online that the U.S. military had "turned on the water" in wildfire-scorched California.
(@realDonaldTrump on Truth Social)
The post read:
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. The days of putting a Fake Environmental argument, over the PEOPLE, are OVER. Enjoy the water, California!!!
Popular posts across X (archived) and Facebook (archived) repeated this claim. Many (archived) claims (archived) repeated Trump's line about water in California being "turned on." Snopes readers also emailed to ask us about this claim.
However, the California Department of Water Resources (DWR), which manages the state's water resources, posted (archived) on X shortly after Trump's Truth Social post that the military did not enter California. Rather, the department said: "The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days." According to the DWR, water supplies in Southern California remained "plentiful."
Due to the conflicting accounts by Trump and the DWR it remains unclear what, if anything, was "turned on" and by whom on Jan. 27, although the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) appeared to claim responsibility for the action in a Jan. 28 X post:
(@DOGE / X)
We reached out to the California DWR for clarification on which pumps were restarted and by whom. The agency referred us to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), which manages water resources in the Western U.S. The U.S. Department of Defense referred us to the White House, which we have also reached out to along with the U.S. Army to confirm whether a military deployment to California took place and what tasks were carried out if so. California Gov. Newsom's office referred us to the DWR, which in turn referred us to the USBR.
Trump has previously claimed that "pumps and valves" or even "a very large faucet" exist in either the north of California or Canada and could help solve alleged water shortages or mismanagement in the south of the Golden State. Trump made this claim most recently during a news conference on Jan. 25, the day after signing an executive order about water flow to Southern California, saying:
I'm signing an executive order to open up the pumps and valves in the north. We want to get that water pouring down here as quickly as possible and let hundreds of millions of gallons of water flow down into Southern California and that'll be a big benefit to you.
The "pumps and valves in the north" might be what Trump was referencing when he said the military "turned on the water" on Jan. 27. We have reached out to the White House to ask it to elaborate on Trump's Jan. 27 post.
Truth Post Follows Executive Order Resurfacing Trump's 2020 Plans for California Water
Water flow in California was and remains a top-of-mind topic for Trump during his prior and current administrations. On Feb. 19, 2020, the Trump administration and the U.S. Secretary of the Interior issued a new plan for the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, reservoirs, canals, hydroelectric power plants and other facilities that provides water to half of California's 52 counties. The plan involved pumping water out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta — the home of the endangered delta smelt fish — and was immediately opposed by Newsom, who, together with the California attorney general, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration "for failing to protect endangered fish species from federal water export operations." The Biden administration eventually approved its own plans in 2024 for the CVP and State Water Project (SWP), which serves urban users including in Los Angeles.
Following his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration, Trump issued first a presidential memorandum, then an executive order, about water flow in California. The memorandum, titled "Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California," asked federal agencies to:
... immediately restart the work from my first Administration [...] to route more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to other parts of the state for use by the people there who desperately need a reliable water supply.
A Trump executive order signed on Jan. 24, titled,"Emergency Measures to Provide Water Resources in California and Improve Disaster Response in Certain Areas," asked the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce to reconsider Trump's 2020 CVP plans and potentially use them in place of Biden's 2024 plans. Section 2 (b) of the order read:
(b) In particular, the Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce shall immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries. The Secretary of the Interior and the Secretary of Commerce shall consider actions including those consistent with the "No Action Alternative" in the Final Environmental Impact Statement issued November 15, 2024, by the Bureau of Reclamation on Long-term Operation of the Central Valley Project and State Water Project.
The "No Action Alternative" mentioned in the executive order is Trump's 2020 plan for the CVP, according to the Record of Decision published alongside the USBR's approval of Biden's 2024 CVP plans.
The order instructed federal agencies to "take all measures, consistent with all applicable authorities, to ensure adequate water resources in Southern California," indicating that the Trump administration remained concerned about a water shortage.
California officials repeatedly said after the start of the January 2025 Los Angeles County wildfires that there was no water shortage in California. Reports of hydrants running dry during firefighting efforts, such as in the Pacific Palisades area, were due to high demands on infrastructure not built to fight wildfires, according to the DWR. Data from the DWR showed that California's reservoirs were at or above historical average levels on Jan. 6, the day before the fires broke out. The DWR said on Jan. 27 that water supplies in the south of the state were "plentiful."