Why Trump’s water releases were dangerous for California’s levees

The condition of the state's system was already precarious when the US president ordered billions of gallons be let out

First, there was Donald Trump's executive order to release billions of gallons of water from two reservoirs in California's Central valley, a move the feds walked back after farmers and water experts decried it as wasteful, ill-conceived - and an unnecessary risk factor for levees in the region.

The mandate, said Nicholas Pinter, a professor of applied geoscience at the University of California at Davis who studies California's levees, amounted to hydrologic insanity".