President Donald Trump is poised to nominate a Western water and agriculture expert with deep ties to California’s Central Valley farm industry to lead the Bureau of Reclamation.
The administration intends to nominate Aubrey Bettencourt to the post overseeing the Interior Department’s Western water programs, a White House official confirmed.
It’s a move that sidesteps the seven-state brawl over the drought-withered Colorado River that has given the Trump administration a litany of political headaches and led to the withdrawal of the administration’s first nominee for Reclamation, a long-time Arizona water hand who had drawn opposition from powerful Republican officials in Utah and Wyoming.
Bettencourt instead hails from the world of California water fights, which have long captured the president’s imagination. In the early days of his second term, Trump hammered California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) over his state’s water policy, blaming it for the destructive fires in Los Angeles and moving to dump water from a Central Valley dam in the name of fire aid — despite the fact the fires had been almost completely extinguished.
