The White House has made its prime to pb the national bureau that manages h2o and dams successful the American West, a Trump medication authoritative confirmed Monday.
If confirmed by Congress, Aubrey Bettencourt, a third-generation California husbandman successful the Central Valley, volition pb the Bureau of Reclamation during a historical clip of interstate struggle and grounds drought on the Colorado River.
After years of deadlock successful closed-door negotiations, the 7 states that stock the stream are apt to spot the Trump medication impose a deal that could mean heavy cuts for h2o users successful immoderate of the nation’s fastest-growing cities and astir productive cultivation regions. That could pb to an expensive, lengthy conflict astatine the U.S. Supreme Court.
In a statement, Colorado River Commissioner for California and pb authorities negotiator JB Hamby praised the choice, citing a heavy transportation to the state. Hamby said helium looked guardant to moving with her and that it was invited news.
“As a California husbandman with heavy acquisition successful h2o and cultivation policy, she brings an important position to Reclamation astatine a clip erstwhile decisions indispensable support some the Colorado River strategy and the radical and farms who beryllium connected it,” Hamby said.
Bettencourt could not beryllium reached for remark Monday.
Long vocation successful ag, water
Bettencourt has been a nationalist servant before.
During the archetypal Trump medication from 2017 to 2021, she was lawman adjunct caput of h2o and subject astatine the Interior Department, the genitor bureau of the Bureau of Reclamation.
Following that post, Bettencourt became the president of the Almond Alliance, a nationalist commercialized relation for almond growers. She aboriginal directed authorities and outer affairs for Netafim, a drip irrigation company.
Most recently, Bettencourt served arsenic main of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the backstage lands conservation bureau limb of the Agriculture Department, until she stepped down successful May.
The existent acting Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner is Scott Cameron, a vocation bureaucrat who has been progressive astatine the Interior Department and with Colorado River negotiations since the opening of the 2nd Trump administration.
Last year, the Trump medication dramatically dropped its nominee for the post, Arizona h2o authoritative Ted Cooke. Cooke said astatine the clip that officials from the Upper Basin states of Colorado, Utah, Wyoming and New Mexico privately had griped astir their cognition of an alleged bias toward the Lower Basin states of Nevada, California and Arizona.
Contact Alan Halaly astatine ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly connected X.
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