“We will have it done very, very quickly,” Trump said to members of the California GOP congressional delegation last October as he signed an executive order. “I hope you enjoy the water that you’re going to have.”

The rules govern a delicate balancing act, determining how much water is sent to cities and farmland and how much must remain in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta ecosystem for threatened wildlife, like endangered salmon. That’s made them a target for Central Valley agricultural interests, because in dry years, the rules can limit their water supply.

Federal biologists set these rules, and they are the final word on how much and when water can be pumped out of the Delta. By law, federal scientists must complete an intricate analysis, and vouch in detailed documents, called biological opinions, that the rules will not drive threatened species such as endangered salmon, delta smelt and other fish to extinction.

To meet the president’s timeline, scientists at NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had to work at an unprecedented pace, cutting back the independent scientific review, and eliminating the public from the process.

All told, they had 135 days to complete their analysis. The last time NOAA Fisheries completed the analysis, in 2008 and 2009, it took 246 days.

In 2008, a seven-member scientific panel reviewed NOAA’s draft rules, including holding a forum that was open to the public. The panel ultimately produced a report more than 50 pages long, flagging issues in the science for federal biologists to consider.

This time around, the independent review has been less rigorous, according to documents obtained by KQED. Fewer scientists were involved, they received incomplete drafts of the plan, and were given less time to complete their review.

In early June, two scientists received a draft of NOAA’s biological opinion evaluating the impact of the plan on endangered salmon, and were given 12 days to review it. But the draft lacked a key chapter explaining how scientific studies about threatened species will inform a water pumping plan.

“These unavailable chapters precluded a thorough top-down review from objectives, methods, results and conclusions,” wrote John R. Skalski, a professor of biological statistics at the University of Washington.

The other reviewer echoed that.

“I therefore provide answers [to] the charge questions that are restricted in scope due to time constraints and not knowing the details,” wrote Kenneth Rose, professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, in his review.

Rose also left four review questions blank “due to time limitations,” he wrote.