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

As portrayed in novels, the California of the future is barely habitable. Brutal storms alternate with crushing droughts. Mudslides and wildfires create waves of climate change refugees.

Fiction? Perhaps less so after last week.

The wildfires in northern California obliterated neighbourhoods; killed dozens, made thousands evacuate or homeless; stunned fire authorities with its fast-moving blazes and tinderbox conditions that, as Governor Jerry Brown said, “we’ve never seen”.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein recalls Gov. Jerry Brown pitching her to support his costly twin-tunnels water plan. He showed her the environmental analysis and she was shocked.

Shocked not at the contents, but at the documents’ size.

“He had the environmental impact reports on his picnic table in his office,” she told me last week. “They were 5 feet tall and 10 feet wide.”

The clear waters of the Colorado River flow gently through the Headgate Rock diversion dam while boaters and Jet Skiers play upstream in front of the Blue Water Resort and Casino.

The dam quietly siphons off almost one fourth of Arizona’s share of Colorado River water and sends it to nearby fields of alfalfa and cotton on the reservation of the Colorado River Indian Tribes.

Many people in Santa Clara County don’t realize that over half the water they use is imported. Even with local dams and percolation ponds to keep groundwater at sustainable levels, the county must import 55 percent of its water to meet the needs of residents, businesses and growers.

While I was walking back to my seat in the Metropolitan Water District Board Room after having made comments in support of the California Water Fix, a stubbly dude in a porkpie hat looked up and sneered loudly at me, “A**hole!” One might think that I had just completed a tirade against Pabst Blue Ribbon to provoke such a response, but my actual comments were self-explanatory and follow here: My name is John Mirisch and I serve on the Beverly Hills City Council.  My comments reflect my own position, though our Council is supportive of the California Water Fix.