California Gov. Gavin Newsom has continued to "kowtow" to environmentalists in the state rather than take any action to protect the state against the wildfires that continue to rage in the Los Angeles area, Rep. Doug LaMalfa said on Newsmax Sunday.
"It's water mismanagement, the kowtow to the environmentalists, all while Newsom wants to wave his arms and be that rehearsed media hound that he is," the California Republican commented on Newsmax's "Sunday Report."
He noted that Newsom, along with then-President Donald Trump and then-Gov. Jerry Brown, was in his district in the town of Paradise, which burned to the ground during the 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California's Butte County.
"Eighty-five people lost their lives," LaMalfa said. "I hear the count is 16 in Southern California now. And so my question is, What has Gavin Newsom learned in these last six years? Because he certainly hasn't applied it towards any meaningful effort to manage fuels in California and our forests and our brushlands."
He added that brush removal work was suspended which would have provided a zone to slow down the current wildfire and give firefighters a chance.
And then, with the water situation, "we're letting hundreds, hundreds of thousands, even millions of acre-feet of water rush to the ocean every day, every week," said LaMalfa. "The Santa Ynez Reservoir, you may have seen is empty right now since last February. That would only take 40 acre-feet to fill that."
But Newsom, since coming into office six years ago, has been "mouthing the support" for forest management, but it hasn't happened, said LaMalfa.
"Instead, they're shifting our water out to the ocean," he said. "It isn't going to farmers. It isn't going to help people in the cities."
The situation, he added, can be fixed overnight.
"We have two sets of pumps down at what's called the Bay-Delta," he said. "The last I looked, there were five running at 5% of capacity, not filling a reservoir and not keeping the aqueduct charge that goes to SoCal so they can fill their reservoirs. We have plenty of water in Northern California if we're not letting millions of acre-feet just go out to the ocean for a no longer existent fish known as the Delta smelt."
Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump tried to help raise the Shasta Dam when he was last in office, but "they stopped it during the Biden era," noted LaMalfa.
Raising the 600-foot-tall dam by an additional 18.5 feet would reportedly have increased water storage capacity of its reservoir by 634,000 acre-feet, or 2 billion gallons, according to local news reports.
"It's at all ends of the equation," said the congressman. "They're hurting us, our ability to be ready, fire safety, and the water storage we need."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!
- Find Newsmax channel in your home via cable and satellite systems – More Info Here
- Watch Newsmax+ on your home TV app or smartphone and watch it anywhere! Try it for FREE – See More Here: NewsmaxPlus.com
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.