Two staffers from Elon Musk’s DOGE team flew to California in late January in a botched bid to release water from a major pump system during the Los Angeles wildfires, CNN reports.
After pressuring the Bureau of Reclamation to turn on pumps at the Jones Pumping Plant near Tracy, California, Tyler Hassen and Bryton Shang reportedly took it upon themselves to rectify the situation—even though the facility was designed to send water to farmers in California’s Central Valley, rather than Los Angeles.
The real goal of the journey, however, seemed to be for the pair to take a photo of themselves turning the taps back on. Unfortunately, their mission quickly fell apart.
Shang was not an official federal employee at the time, so could not access the facility’s control room. Hassen, meanwhile, was thwarted by the pumps being offline due to a planned power outage. Instead of throwing in the towel, however, the DOGE staffers posed for a pic in front of a map of the plant, congratulating the Bureau for “getting the pumps back online.”
Experts criticized the entire endeavor as unnecessary and wasteful, given that California is facing a looming dry season. In the wake of DOGE’s visit, President Donald Trump ordered the U.S. Army Corps to release 2.2 billion gallons of water from two dams in Central California, which caused flooding in the farmlands. Regardless, Trump celebrated the release—claiming it would help avert future tragedies.
