You are now in California and the U.S. category.

Mary Kendall, the deputy federal inspector general for the U.S. Department of Interior, today issued a 42 page report detailing the misuse of the money and the recommendations made to the state and federal agencies to resolve the issue. “The audit says that California water districts — and not federal taxpayers — were supposed to bear the costs of the $16-billion water project,“ the Associated Press reported via the LA Times. “The inspector general says federal authorities also did not fully disclose to Congress or others that it was covering much of the cost of the project’s planning.”

Acrid yellow smoke clogs the skies of major Western U.S. cities, a human-caused fire in the Columbia River Gorge rains ash on Portland, Oregon, and a century-old backcountry chalet burns to the ground in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Wildfires are chewing across dried-out Western forests and grassland, putting 2017 on track to be among the worst fire seasons in a decade.

In 2015, the federal government issued a decision that temporarily blocked Cadiz Inc.’s plan to sell groundwater from the Mojave Desert, ruling the company would need a permit to build a water pipeline alongside a railroad. That decision by the federal Bureau of Land Management, however, was based on a 2011 legal opinion that railroads could only authorize other types of uses “that derive from or further a railroad purpose.”

In terms of how to guarantee a good water supply for Southern California during all these weather changes, I wrote an article for CityWatch recently, “Life Without Water, Or Why the Delta Tunnel Is So Critical to LA.” On September 26 there is a key vote coming up at the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) as to whether the project will move forward with their approval.