Audit of watershed group inconclusive

The future of the Cottonwood Watershed Group remains uncertain, as board member Rick Ortega announced last week he assumed duties of interim executive director. Despite the Cal Fire audit on Oct. 14-15, Ortega said he still doesn't know how much the group owes of grant funds accepted by the group.

"We only got access to financial data last Thursday," he said in a telephone interview Oct. 20.

Investigators "still don't have a clear record of what the grant funds were spent on," said Dan Lang, grant manager of California Fire Safe Council, in a telephone interview Oct. 20.

The sheriff's office investigation of the group is also ongoing, Ortega said.

The group also discovered that it has two grants from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Ortega said. For information about the grants, he deferred to Vieva Swearingen, the former coordinator for the group who wrote the grant application before leaving the group in 2008.

The two grants, which make up about $220,000, include a creek sediment study and a program to eradicate invasive plants, Swearingen said. Ortega said he will ask the board to bring Swearingen on to administer the grants for the group. Swearingen confirmed that she offered to do the work as a volunteer.