"This is another example of complete failure of Democrat governance across the board," Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said on the Just the News, No Noise TV show. "I mean, you have to maintain your forests. You have to clean them up.....you have to actually save water."
Regarding water management, Johnson said that there is abundant water coming out of the mountains with the snow packs.
"They don't save it because they got to save the snail darter," he added.
In real life, California has some 1300 reservoirs, including the 8th largest reservoir in the US. Most or almost all are currently at 80%-110% of "full pool", with another month or two of rain likely to come. A look at Los Angeles County on GoogMaps or Mapquest should suffice to demonstrate that the country has multiple reservoirs.
In real life, the LA area fires started in Federal lands. This can be seen on GoogMaps. Maybe Trump will reflect on this and clear out the pertinent morons in the Interior Department.
In real life, the snail darter was used to hinder the Tellico dam in Tennessee, a couple thousand miles or so from California.
In real life, what Johnson errantly alluded to is the Delta Smelt, and the water flow to which he objects is regulated by
Federal court decisions.
In real life, the Delta Smelt travesty-case applies to the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta. A peek at GoogMaps should suffice to show that the Delta is about 400 miles from LA. The Sacramento River, which carries more water than the San Joaquin, is farther north. The southern-most tributary to the San Joaquin River, the Kern River, has a reservoir about 120 miles from the fires, with the Tehachapi Mountains in between.
That's an excessively detailed explanation why the Delta Smelt cases are utterly irrelevant to firefighting in Los Angeles County.Maybe the Senator from Wisconsin should spend some time on GoogMaps looking at California geography before spouting such foolish nonsense. And maybe come for a visit and do the 6 or 8 hour drive on I-5 or US 101 from LA to the SF Bay Area (the Delta is in the northeast Bay Area).