Worse, they were working with half information. The San Joaquin valley water does eventually connect to LA. California has, over the last century, interconnected a majority of their water, and water from other states, to LA. LA shouldn't exist in its current form. It's arid desert, yet way too many people and crops exist there. The El Diablo Canyon nuclear facility exists solely to pump water over mountains for LA. (Was hilarious when Newsom wanted to shut it down until he was educated.)
All that said, wasting reservoirs thinking the water will instantly teleport to LA is so destructively stupid. There is so much interplay in their water infrastructure.
Those boneheaded idiot kids shouldn't have been given the time of day by anyone. Farmers should hunt them down and make those two work the fields by hand until they recoup their losses. Including filtering out the salt brine they likely contaminated some fields with.
May I introduce you to what already existed at one time? (Motorola Atrix 4G from 2011 with Ubuntu desktop when docked.)