There is a school of thought that the 2.2 billion gallons of water that President Trump ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release last week that flowed from the Lake Kaweah and Lake Success reservoirs was wasted.

There is another school that contends Gov. Gavin Newsom was caving to Trump’s misconceptions regarding how California manages its water by his own order to divert into storage excessive flows generated by the current atmospheric river events drenching Northern California.

Sorry, but both views expressed and advanced in media coverage by various water interest spokespeople were a bit self-serving.

First, Trump’s claim the water released from the two federal reservoirs was “heading to farmers throughout the State and to Los Angeles.”

Not exactly.

First, the only way water could reach LA from the Tulare County reservoirs is if it is shipped in by truck. The basin does not connect to the California Aqueduct, which is the only way to physically get water from north of the Tehachapi Mountains to the Los Angeles Basin.

Second, the water is not heading to farmers throughout the state. It can only be used by those downstream in the water basin.

Because it was done with little notice, it meant farmers that the specific water storage reservoirs serve with irrigation water may not have been able to divert it into holding basins for groundwater recharge.

Trump clearly didn’t get it right but was the water wasted?

The answer is no.

That’s because it ultimately ended up in Lake Tulare that, just 150 years ago, was the biggest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and is now, most of the time, a dry lake bed.

As such, it has been characterized as having had zero benefit.

If “zero benefit” was qualified as being in the eyes of the advocates making such a statement, that would be correct.

There has been massive over drafting of groundwater going back over a century throughout the San Joaquin Valley.

Since 2015 alone, subsidence — created when aquifers are depleted — has compacted the ground in the south valley city of Corcoran by 5 feet.

That means the city of 20,000 is five feet lower than it was 10 years. Over pumping by large farms does wonders for infrastructure, the integrity of buildings, and domestic water supplies.

There are areas in the south valley where the land has sunk by more than 28 feet since the 1920s.

Is the water going to waste?

No, because it is going to where nature intended it to flow.

It will help recharge the ground below the dry lake bed.

Will farmers benefit from the release?

Yes and no. 

If the atmospheric river events this week and the rest of the rainy/snow season turns out to be a dud, the reservoirs might not adequately be replenished for irrigation water for farms the two reservoirs serve.

Farms that draw on the shrinking aquifer beneath the Tulare dry lake bed will benefit. Plus, it may give cities like Corcoran some temporary cushion against further subsidence.

As far as Newsom channeling Trump, what the governor did is entirely different from what Trump ordered.

State regulations overseen by multiple Sacramento agencies make it a challenge to nimbly adjust to periods of heavy rainfall, where most of the precipitation falls below reservoirs designed to capture snowmelt.

Newsom’s order calls for his office to be informed of statutory or regulatory barriers so he can consider suspending them.

Keep in mind that excessive runoff is above and beyond what is committed by statute, adjudicated water rights, and court rulings for specific purposes and jurisdictions.

Excess flows from atmospheric rivers up until last year ended up 100 percent flowing through the Delta, into the Bay, and out into the Pacific Ocean.

It has a cleansing effect of sorts on the Delta and Bay ecological systems.

Last winter, Newsom made a similar move.

So if you are an advocate for either the Bay or Delta, larger-than-usual storm runoff heading into the Bay is not being wasted.

That also means you want to grab the attention of the California electorate that didn’t cast their vote for Trump’s dance card.

You want to do so to apply pressure to Newsom to cease and desist his efforts to capture excess run-off to recharge groundwater and fill off-stream storage facilities such as San Luis Reservoir.

What better way to accomplish that than issuing a statement to try to make it look as if the Governor is now the President’s stooge.

Trump missed the mark, but the water released is far from being labeled accurately as having “zero benefit” unless you advocate for LA water interests or big corporate farms.

Environmentalists concerned about the Tulare basin would beg to differ.

And Newsom is recklessly cozying up to Trump’s view of the world if you advocate for fishermen, the Delta or the Bay.

Farmers and cities that depend on stored surface water would beg to differ.

California water issues are akin to solving a Rubik’s Cube, where a square turns a different color when you or one or two turns away from solving it.

There are riparian, contracted, and watershed rights.

The needs include fish flows, farming to grow food, urban uses, and non-native fish that sports fishermen want to the detriment of native fish that skews water allocations.

There are in basin use of water and water that crosses multiple water basins to get to an end users.

Salinity, drought, floods, subsidence, and more are among the wild cards.

The players include irrigation districts, the state, corporate interests, the federal government, advocates for the environment, and cities.

The playing fields are courts, the state legislature, entrenched water bureaucracies tasked with specific goals and could care less about competing interests even on the government regulatory level, and water transfer markets.

It’s not a problem that can be solved to any lasting degree typing out decrees in 144 characters or less.

That said, there is clearly one area that Trump and Newsom are 100 percent in agreement on: The bureaucracy is not nimble enough at critical junctures.