CEO Urges Trump-Newsom Alliance For California’s Thirsty Valley

VISALIA, California — California’s water crisis was built by years of bad policy, but one CEO believes there could be a solution.

Since the state’s inception, California’s farming industry has been a powerhouse, producing nearly half of the nation’s vegetables and over three-quarters of its fruits and nuts using less than 3% of U.S. farmland. Chronic water shortages now threaten this success, hitting Central Valley farmers especially hard.

The state holds roughly 1% of its water in the 152-mile Friant-Kern Canal, which delivers water to roughly one million acres. Meeting along the nearly 152-mile canal, Friant Water Authority CEO Johnny Amaral spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation about California’s water conservation crisis. Amaral explained that 32 contractors, including communities, farms and water districts, draw from the canal, which stretches from just outside Fresno to the Kern River.

THE ORIGINAL PROJECT

The canal is part of the larger Central Valley Project (CVP), a federal system with roots stretching back over a century. First conceived in the early 20th century and built out between the late 1930s and the 1970s, the CVP was built to capture Northern California’s winter rains and Sierra snowmelt.

The water was stored in massive reservoirs like Shasta Dam, then delivered south through canals, like the Friant-Kern, in order to irrigate the rest of California. Though initially reliable, the CVP began to deteriorate about 30 years ago due to regulation, litigation, lawsuits and other restrictions on water usage and operations.

“It’s slowly but surely diminished these projects’ ability to perform their primary function which is to deliver ample water supplies for irrigation and drinking water needs. It’s a long term problem that’s not getting better,” Amaral told the DCNF. “The end result is less reliability. And less reliability means lack of certainty.”

“When you remove certainty from water operations and from water reliability, it creates stress not just on the trees but on the farmers who own and operate them, the farm workers and all the communities that depend on a vibrant economy to function,” Amaral added. “If you take land out of the production that’s less tax-based, less economic activity, that’s less opportunity, and you can feel the ripple effect throughout the valley.”

Regulatory droughts have often turned water abundance into scarcity. In 2023, the Sierra snowpack hit record levels in addition to widespread flooding which had filled reservoirs like Shasta to near capacity. However, due to the Endangered Species Act (ESA)-mandated assessments and state flow requirements, Delta facilities were forced to hold pumping cutbacks.

As a result, billions of gallons of water were diverted to the ocean to protect the Chinook salmon migration and Delta smelt habitat. Farmers were then left with far lower allocations than expected, idling hundreds of thousands of acres and forcing growers to over-rely on groundwater.

Restrictions like the ESA, layered with the 1992 Central Valley Project Improvement Act‘s reallocation of up to 800,000 acre-feet annually for fish and wildlife, have limited farmers to fraction of contracted supplies, even during wet years. Contractors in areas like Fresno, Kings and Kern counties often end up with only 0% to 55% of the water they’re supposed to receive in normal years because of restrictions. Thus, small growers are unable to afford water transfers or upgrades and accelerating land sales or growers not touching the land.

With some estimates of roughly over 40 lawsuits brought against the CVP over the last 30 years, a good portion of the cases have been tied to the Endangered Species Act (ESA). Amaral told the DCNF that this piece of legislation stunted California’s water conservation attempts.

WATCH

FISH VS. PEOPLE

In 1973, the ESA was originally passed with broad support, with implications for CVP operations starting in the early 1990s. Wildlife like the Chinook salmon and Delta smelt eventually triggered formal consultations under Section 7 of the ESA, with federal agencies issuing assessments requiring changes to how water would be stored, released and pumped.

The changes resulted in reduced pumping to facilities like the Tracy Pumping Plant and Banks Pumping Plant. When salmon are migrating and Delta smelt are spawning, pumping is scaled back.

Other impacts have also included maintaining flows and habitats for species protected under the ESA, which requires regulators to have minimum freshwater outflows from the Delta to the Bay area to keep salinity levels low and prevent saltwater intrusion harming smelt habitats. Thus it releases more water into the ocean rather than capturing and storing it in reservoirs like Shasta or exporting south.

“There is a way to manage water supplies in California in a way that doesn’t impact the environment, but also provides on the promise that these projects made to those who made the investments to take the risk,” Amaral told the DCNF when addressing the ESA. “And it is a risk to be in farming.”

“So until there’s a real effort to look at how to make the Endangered Species Act really take into account human impacts, along with fisheries and species impacts, we’re going to be dealing with these problems for the foreseeable future,” Amaral continued.

“WORTHLESS FISH”

Since President Donald Trump’s first term, he has slammed the Delta smelt’s effect on California’s water conservation, notably increasing his criticism of the protections in his second campaign during 2024.

In 2020, Trump signed a memorandum and record of decision to revise biological opinions, prioritizing water deliveries to Central Valley farmers over protections for the smelt and salmon. However, the policy immediately faced backlash, and after the Biden administration took over, then-California Attorney General Xavier Becerra filed a motion for a preliminary injunction.

But during Trump’s second administration, he revived elements of his 2020 approach, issuing a memorandum on January 20, 2025, called “Putting People over Fish” by agencies like the National Marine Fisheries Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The order directed agencies to “restart the work” from his first administration in order to maximize water flows south, explicitly referencing the Delta smelt as a reason for the waste of “enormous water supply.”

Just 11 days after Trump announced his order, Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom swiftly followed and signed an executive order that year aimed to maximize water capture and storage from upcoming severe storms in Northern California. Under his direction, Newsom ordered state agencies like the Department of Water Resources to boost diversions and recharge efforts amid atmospheric river events.

With both administrations pushing to move forward on water conservation, Amaral told the DCNF that he hopes some type of resolution to the issues the state is facing could be sorted out. However, he noted it’s going to take the two administrations coming together.

“I think it’s incumbent upon the Trump administration and the Newsom administration to try to — and I don’t want to sound naive here, I recognize it might sound naive,” Amaral said. “But there is an opportunity right now for the two administrations to sit down and say, ‘Okay, what’s happening now? It’s not good. It’s not good for anyone’s constituencies.’”

“‘It’s not good for the farmers here. It’s not good for the residents of Southern California. It’s not a good situation. Let’s try to hammer this thing out. Let’s try to figure out some common-sense ways to improve this.’ And I’m hopeful that those negotiations and discussions will start soon,” Amaral continued.

The Friant CEO noted that officials from both administrations have been out on the ground to visit the project. The question remains, however, if the two administrations can come together before California’s farmers are squeezed out of the state for good.

NO FARMERS, NO GOLDEN STATE

When asked about the impacts of California’s water issues on local farmers, Amaral warned that the ripple effects are “devastating” to the community.

“There’s a lot of other costs associated with farming between insurance costs and fuel costs, you name it, labor costs. So when you package all that together, if you’re in a farming operation where you’re already operating on the margins, it becomes, in some cases, kind of a last resort to sell out and move to sell your property,” Amaral added. “And that’s happening.”

“The first to be impacted by these water cutbacks and the lack of water reliability are those small farmers because they can’t tolerate as much as a larger enterprise can. So a larger enterprise sees the opportunity to gobble up more land,” Amaral told the DCNF.

The pressures on farmers in the Golden State have already begun, with a 2025 state Assembly report citing that the state has lost about four small farms per day since 2017. Recent projections show up to 535,000 acres of farmland could also be idled due to water regulations like Sustainable Groundwater Management Act in the San Joaquin Valley alone, costing billions in lost output and tens of thousands of jobs.

And while Amaral notes that the remaining farmers have been “innovative” with dwindling resources, it’s a question of how much longer they can last. The Central Valley’s future rests on their shoulders.