Residents and officials living near California’s Salton Sea skewered the state water board in Sacramento on Tuesday for dragging their feet to solve the lake’s steady shrinking.

“You assigned a task force to address this problem, but neither the task nor the force were sufficient to meet the scope of the problem,” Imperial Irrigation District general manager Kevin Kelley told the five-person State Water Resources Control Board. “The state has dithered and called it due diligence. We have a ticking time bomb and you’ve treated it like a beach ball at a backyard picnic.”