California water releases ordered by Trump draw criticism: 'It's going to be wasted'
President Trump's order to release billions of gallons of water in California's Central Valley last week — with the purported goal of dousing fires 100 miles away — is being slammed as both ineffective and wasteful by experts and California lawmakers.
"No one can make heads or tails out of what Donald Trump did or why, or thinks it makes any sense whatsoever," Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said in an MSNBC interview on Monday night.
"That water can’t get to Los Angeles," Schiff continued. "The fires are out, they’re not 5 percent contained, or 20 percent, or 50 percent contained. They’re 100 percent contained. So, that water is going to be of no use to firefighters."
The water release occurred late last week via the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and involved the opening of two Tulare County dams — in Lake Kaweah and Success Lake — located in the heart of California's agriculture-rich Central Valley.
On Friday, Trump boasted on Truth Social about the "beautiful water flow" that he "just opened in California," noting that 1.6 billion gallons had been released that day alone.
The releases occurred following Trump's issuance of an executive order that directed U.S. government agencies to override California's water policies as needed, © The Hill
