This was only supposed to be a story about water. But in California, stories about water always

end up being about money, power, and deception.

It was June 2016, and I was new to California.

I'd driven into Los Angeles just a month earlier from North Dakota,

with my two cats, cowboy boots, and a wedding dress.

I'd been hired as the environment reporter at a public radio station,

and the first assignment my new editor gave me was go cover the drought.

We're in an historic drought.

Governor Jerry Brown wants to cut the state's overall water usage by 20...

It was the worst anyone could remember.

Lakes were evaporating before our very eyes.

Entire forests were dying and thousands of wells were running dry. We're standing on dry grass, and we should be standing in five feet of snow.

California owes its very existence to hubris, to the relentless battle we've waged for decades

to make this desert our garden. But during the drought,

people started to wonder if we were going to lose that battle. Maybe the California dream really

was a mirage. This one town I'd never heard of, a Mojave Desert town called California City,

it was wasting a ton of water. So,

I drove out there to figure out why.

I had been expecting a small town, a small town with a bustling main street where you could drink a beer, get a haircut, and buy a shovel all on the same block.

But California City, it wasn't like that.

It was a quiet, sprawling, uneasy place.

Oh, wow. brawling, uneasy place. It's the third largest city in the state, but with only about 14,000 people.

...