The Interior Department’s lead water regulator provided $50 million in improperly managed subsidies to California contractors under the Obama administration as part of a major conservation program in the Golden State, the agency’s Inspector General reported on Friday.
The agency’s Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water management activities in the West, did not disclose to Congress the cost of its Bay Delta Conservation Plan, nor could it explain why contractors had not paid back $50 million in federal funds related to the project.
The bureau had decided that the $50 million in appropriated funds “was used for a nonreimbursable purpose, meaning the cost was absorbed by the federal government rather than being repaid by … water contractors,” the report said. “Had [the bureau] used the appropriated funds for reimbursable [conservation plan] operation and maintenance, the purpose for which the funds were originally requested, the costs would have been repaid by [the] … water contractors.”
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