Federal Reports

On July 4, 2025, flash flooding occurred in Kerr County in central Texas when water levels along the Guadalupe River rose rapidly, causing widespread and severe property damage, injury, and loss of life. Given the catastrophic nature of the flash flood event, plus ongoing concerns about staffing levels at the National Weather Service (NWS), members of Congress asked OIG to examine NWS’s response and resources.

We reviewed the actions taken by NWS prior to and during the catastrophic flash flood. Throughout the event, NWS was responsible for coordinating with its core partners and issuing timely weather and emergency alerts. The Austin/San Antonio Weather Forecast Office (WFO) coordinated and communicated with core partners and issued multiple flood alerts on July 3 and 4. Although staffing vacancies existed at the WFO, staff asserted that the vacancies did not affect their ability to forecast, issue flood alerts, and provide support to Kerr County officials and other core partners.

This review provides a snapshot of key NWS actions and responses prior to and during the flood. It focuses on NWS staffing, coordination, forecasting, and issuance of flood alerts, with an emphasis on NWS support provided to Kerr County, Texas.

The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) business unit (BU) focuses on identifying and prioritizing enterprise risks. Annually, ERM leads the preparation of an enterprise risk portfolio, which includes risks across TVA, to aid leadership in strategic and business planning processes.  Each BU includes their specific risks in the portfolio and documents the probability of occurrence, financial impact, and actions to manage the risk.  TVA Nuclear included Asset/Equipment Failure –  Low-Pressure Turbines risk in fiscal year (FY) 2025 ERM risk portfolio. The risk description stated that one or more low-pressure turbines fail to perform as designed and the details only included Units 2 and 3 at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant (Browns Ferry).  The actions to address the risk included installing new turbines and steam-path upgrades.  Due to the importance of the reliability of TVA’s nuclear assets, we performed an evaluation of the risk mitigation of low-pressure turbines to determine if TVA was taking planned actions and measuring the impact of completed actions.

We determined TVA has taken actions or has plans in place to address the low-pressure turbine risk.  TVA Nuclear has completed 11 of 15 mitigating actions identified for the risk.  The 4 remaining actions are expected to be completed between 2028 and 2030. However, we determined TVA was not effectively measuring the impact of completed actions and a change in the risk scope on the probability of occurrence and financial impact.  In addition, we identified some risk information was not documented accurately.

A former executive of a Chicago-area non-profit organization has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for misappropriating nearly $1.9 million through a pair of fraud schemes.

The VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a healthcare inspection to assess the coordination and scheduling of community care for a patient with a lung mass suspicious for cancer at the VA Fayetteville Coastal Healthcare System (system) in North Carolina. The inspection followed a complaint that the patient experienced delays in diagnosis and treatment between December 2023 and May 2024. The OIG substantiated delays in ordering diagnostic imaging and scheduling community care, which may have reduced the opportunity for earlier diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.

The patient’s primary care provider did not act on a radiologist’s recommendation for a chest computed tomography (CT) scan for over 15 months after an abnormal chest x-ray in March 2022. After a CT scan confirmed a lung mass, a pulmonologist requested expedited community care, but staff delayed scheduling the appointment for more than five months. The OIG found no explanation for the delay, despite documented handoffs and reminders. 

Contributing factors included leadership turnover, lack of a community care oversight council, and absence of procedures to prioritize high-risk consults for serious conditions.

System leaders also missed opportunities to address the patient’s delayed care and broader programmatic deficiencies. Leaders did not follow VA policy for investigating the complaint, initiate timely peer reviews, or complete an institutional disclosure. Efforts to address a backlog of unscheduled consults were fragmented and ineffective. The OIG concluded system leaders did not ensure timely care and oversight. 

The OIG made eight recommendations. In response, VA leaders shared plans to review consult management practices and the system’s backlog, ensure implementation of a community care oversight council, management of high-priority consults, quality management tracking processes, staff training, and attempts to disclose the adverse event.

Why We Did This Report

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Office of Inspector General performed this audit to determine whether the EPA’s annual appropriations and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, or IIJA, funds in the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, or CWSRF, Program are at risk from procurement fraud related to construction bidding processes. 
 

Summary of Findings

Federal dollars flowing through the CWSRF Program are at risk of procurement fraud in the construction bidding process. This risk primarily stems from two factors. First, the CWSRF Program’s structure as a partnership between the EPA and the states means that the states are primarily responsible for administering the state-level programs and projects. Second, the Uniform Guidance provides that loans from a pass-through entity to a subrecipient, such as loans made under a state revolving fund program, are not subject to the procurement standards.

On October 10, 2023, the North Carolina General Assembly enacted the Clean Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard (CEPS) requiring rural electric cooperatives and municipal electric suppliers in North Carolina to meet 10 percent of their energy needs through clean energy resources or energy efficiency measures.  Additionally, North Carolina CEPS requires a percentage of retail sales be attributed to solar, poultry, and swine resources.  The Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) renewable energy certificates (REC) portfolio management process includes obtaining and retiring RECs to meet the requirements set forth in CEPS on behalf of its four local power companies (LPC) in the state.  By September 1 of each year, TVA is required to file an annual compliance report for the prior year.  Also, at that time, TVA files its compliance plans for the calendar year in which the plan is filed and the following 2 years.  Due to increased power demand from data centers in North Carolina, we performed an evaluation to determine if TVA has adequate RECs to meet regulatory requirements in North Carolina for LPCs.

We found that TVA appropriately retired enough RECs to achieve compliance with North Carolina CEPS in 2024 and has enough RECs to meet the general, solar, and swine requirements for compliance year 2025.  However, there is a risk that TVA will not be able to meet the poultry requirement for 2025.  TVA has taken action to reduce this risk by submitting a request for offers in 2025 to purchase poultry RECs.  Additionally, our review of the 2024 CEPS Compliance Report identified an understatement of RECs to be carried forward for use in future years.

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