With wildfires ripping through Los Angeles, some internet users have blamed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for initiating the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, claiming it’s causing water shortages in Southern California.
Araceli Bloom, a social media influencer with more than 230,000 followers on TikTok, blamed the dam removal project—in which four hydroelectric dams on Klamath River, which runs through California and Oregon, were deactivated and demolished—for causing water shortages and making the fight to contain the blazes more difficult.
“California is burning because Gavin Newsom Prioritized FISH over Californians,” Bloom said in her tweet, which she also shared to Instagram. “Los Angeles is Running out of water to fight the fires because Gavin Newsom was recently responsible for the largest water dam removal in US history to save FISH.”
Turning Point USA contributor Graham Allen also insinuated a connection between the dam removal project and Los Angeles County’s recent water shortage troubles. “FLASHBACK: Governor Gavin Newsom BRAGGED about “the largest dam removal in U.S. history,’” he tweeted, also sharing a video of Newsom discussing the dam removal project. “The L.A. FIRE DEPT. just ran out of water …”
RT, a Russian-state media outlet formerly known as Russia Today, also echoed the claims. “California Governor Gavin Newsom proudly talking about the ‘largest dam removal in US history,’” the account tweeted, also sharing the same video. “The dismantling of four hydroelectric dams on Klamath River—completed in 2024—is now being blamed for the shortage of water available to fight LA fires.” Earlier this year, the U.S. Justice Department found that RT paid nearly $10 million to push pro-Kremlin propaganda to Americans.
It’s true that Newsom was party to the largest dam removal in U.S. history. As governor he had advocated for four dams to be removed from the Klamath River, and a project to remove the dams was completed in October 2024. The project, however, was not exclusively a California initiative but the result of an agreement between California, Oregon, the federal government, local Native American tribes, the dams’ owner, and other entities. The dam removal project sought to revitalize salmon and steelhead fish populations in the area by returning “free-flowing condition[s]” to the Klamath River, a change local native tribes had long advocated for. “The Klamath was once the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast,” stated an August 2024 press release from Newsom’s office, “before the construction of concrete dams, beginning in 1918, blocked migratory salmon and steelhead from accessing nearly 400 miles of critical river habitat.”
However, claims that the four dams’ removal affected Southern California’s water supply are incorrect. While Los Angeles officials reported that water storage tanks in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles County “went dry” early Wednesday morning, the removal of the dams along the Klamath River played no role in the shortage. The water stored in the dams, located more than 500 miles away from Los Angeles County, was primarily used to spin a turbine and generate electricity. The dams’ reservoirs were used to supply water to firefighting forces fending off wildfires, but only in that region, not in Southern California. Further, the removal project took a host of measures to “avoid a net diminution in firefighting resources or an increase in the fire ignition risk as a result of the loss of the Project reservoirs.”
Southern California never received water from those dams, even when they were operational. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a state-run agency that delivers water across six counties—including Los Angeles County—does not take water from the Klamath River area. About 30 percent of the water supplied to Southern California comes from the Northern Sierra region of California, transported south through the State Water Project, California’s water storage and delivery system that spans more than 700 miles. Southern California receives an additional 20 percent of its water from the Colorado River, collected near California’s border with Arizona and delivered via aqueduct. The region receives the rest of its water from a variety of sources, including the eastern part of California’s Sierra mountain range, several local reservoirs, recycled water, groundwater collected from underground aquifers and from desalination (treating seawater by removing the salt).
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