“ Kearns pointed to a statement from Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, who said Wednesday, “We are fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is really challenging.”
Caleb Scoville, an assistant professor of sociology at Tufts University who studies the dynamics of environmental controversies, pointed to the California Department of Water Resources website, which shows that most of the state’s major reservoirs are at or above their historic levels for this time of year. He added that that is especially true of reservoirs in Southern California, refuting claims that Newsom or Crowley didn’t refill them.
Scoville added that the Delta smelt, in particular, has repeatedly been blamed by politicians, including Trump, for environmental problems in California. Scoville said the policies that protect the smelt and other species, like salmon, sometimes affect the amount of water that can be pumped at a particular time from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, which is the heart of California’s water distribution system, “but this is not a factor that’s relevant at all to the wildfire situation or the ability of Los Angeles to handle the wildfires.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/conservatives-play-blame-game-california-wildfires-pointing-fingers-de-rcna186983
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