The claim: 

In a number of wildfire-related tweets, President Trump has claimed that the state is allowing too much water to be “diverted into the Pacific Ocean.” It’s a claim that predates his election and, in fact, any reference to wildfires. At a campaign rally in Fresno in 2016, he assailed state lawmakers who, he said, “are taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”

The facts:

Of the many factors that contribute to California’s worsening wildfire problem, a lack of water is not one of them. 

Instead, the president seems to be conflating two perennial California policy problems: fire and water. The latter relates to how water in this arid state should be shared between different regions and different interest groups. And here the president is taking a clear stand. 

For years, farmers in the Central Valley have clamored for the state to divert more water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta (which, yes, does eventually go to the Pacific Ocean) toward growers to the south. But the state limits those diversions in order to protect endangered species that pass through the delta and to prevent the incursion of ocean saltwater up the river. 

In October 2019, Trump took action, introducing new rules for two major federal water projects that will increase the amount of water shunted to the Valley. In February 2020, the president directed federal regulators to begin making those diversion. The old rules, Trump told a crowd in Bakersfield during a signing ceremony, “needlessly flushed millions and millions of gallons of fresh, beautiful clean water from up north, straight into the Pacific Ocean.” California sued and the case is still ongoing.