he could not do more harm to this country

[solarbird]

Let me pick one way Trump is working to destroy the United States. One petty way, designed to cause long-term harm. One internal way, striking directly at Americans.

Last week, Trump ordered drawdowns of water from Federally-controlled reservoirs in California. On Friday, those drawdowns started.

This is what he was talking about when he lied about the US Army entering California and “turning on the water” to fight the fires.

(He also lied about water flowing from Cascadia south, which literally cannot happen as there are not pipe connections over the mountains separating our watersheds, but that’s a secondary issue.)

Trump opened winter storage reservoirs in California’s San Joaquin Valley to throw a bunch of unexpected water downstream. For no purpose, other than sabotage.

These reservoirs are nowhere near the LA fires. They do not affect water supplies in LA. No one downstream can use the water; in fact, state and local engineers had to rush to avoid damage from the unplanned and unexpected outflow, and convinced the US Army Corps of Engineers to slow the release to this end.

Here’s where they are:

You’ll note that’s northeast of San Francisco, and nowhere even remotely close to LA.

A little of that water will seep into the ground. Not much.

Most will go out to the sea, unused and untouched.

And so, it will not be there in the summer, when it is actually needed, for the purposes for which it was actually being stored – mostly, for agriculture. There will be less water for crops.

Will there be enough?

Maybe. This is in the north, so we’ll hope so. But we don’t know.

This is Trump fucking California, and the citizens of California – an American state – because he can. He will, of course, blame Democrats, and some number of his cultists will believe him. I don’t know how many, but it will be somewhere between “most” and “all.”

There are so many more stories like this. So many more, many of higher priority and importance, and who knows how many more further down the scale.

The breadth of that attack is the point, because his goal is not and has never been to “save America.”

His goal is to destroy it, for personal profit, and own the ruins.

When I say that Trump could not do more to harm this country than if he were a paid Russian agent?

I mean it.

Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.

Comments

[armiphlage]

Trump also talks about having water flow down from Canada to irrigate Utah and other dry red states.

I think he truly does not understand that "down" on a map does not mean that water will actually flow that way.

[solarbird]

It's a fucking nightmare and I don't see how this ends without... absolutely nightmare territory.

[melchar]

Considering that Trump has received preferential treatment by Russia as far as regards his properties there & loans given, IMO he is paid.

[arethinn]

Your point is taken, but you've got your geography incorrect. The San Joaquin Valley is what we call the southern half of the central valley in California, named after the San Joaquin River that flows northward through it.



Suisun Bay, where your pin is, is the eventual mouth of the river. Tulare County, where the dams in question are, is much further south:



The red circles are Lake Kaweah and Lake Success. (You can see the Kaweah River at the bottom right of the watershed map above; the Tule River is off its southern edge.)

So "sending massive flows down river channels toward farmlands in the San Joaquin Valley" in this case means down the two rivers from the somewhat higher altitudes in the Sierra foothills where the reservoirs are, westwards towards the valley. It's still a long way from LA, though.

[solarbird]

Well, fine, then, it's "this is where the water goes" rather than "this is where the dams were." It doesn't affect that none of this goes anywhere near LA, but helps no one and absolutely does fuck over farmers who had rights to those waters.