Donald Trump ran as a champion of the forgotten man, and few have been forgotten more by the political class than California’s parched farmers. On Friday the President made good on a campaign promise to deliver more water to more people.

California has an arid climate in the best of times. Yet tens of billions of gallons of water each year are wasted because of restrictions on pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta that are intended to protect fish including smelt and chinook salmon.

One problem is that California lacks storage capacity in the north to capture the abundant precipitation that falls in the mountains during wet years, such as 2017. Runoff then rushes into rivers that dump into the delta rather than flowing south or into reservoirs for storage for the dry years.

The other major problem is federal regulations, known as biological opinions, that limit the rate at which water in the delta can be pumped to the south of the state. During storm surges, most water is flushed out to San Francisco Bay. In August 59,300 acre feet of water were wasted—enough to sustain 474,000 Californians for a year—and more than one million acre feet may flow out to sea during wet months.

These restrictions are intended to prevent smelt from getting ensnared in the pumps and to maintain a pH balance suitable for fish. Nonetheless fish populations have continued to decline, which some biologists attribute to predatory species like the striped bass and wastewater.