Clock Ticking on Cadiz Project
Billions of Gallons of Groundwater May Leave Mojave for LA
Clock Ticking on Cadiz Project
Activist group Public Citizen is calling on federal officials to give the public a greater opportunity to evaluate a massive water project in California’s Mojave Desert that could dry out natural springs, create dust bowls and put threatened animals and plants - including the bighorn sheep, golden eagle and desert tortoise - at greater risk of extinction. The project has been criticized on numerous grounds, including the close relationship between California Gov. Gray Davis and the CEO of the corporation that stands to earn a half billion dollars from the project.
"This project is the mother of all bad ideas," said Jane Kelly, director of Public Citizen’s California office. "It is the standard against which flawed natural resource management should be judged."
The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a division of the US Department of Interior, has given the public until Nov. 5 to review and comment on a nearly foot-thick environmental study of the project. Public Citizen is asking the BLM to extend the comment period by 90 days and to release details about how depletion of groundwater will be prevented.
Under the proposed arrangement, fruit growing company Cadiz Inc., which owns land atop an aquifer in the Mojave Desert, could sell as much as 60,000 acre-feet of native groundwater per year - 20 billion gallons - to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD), which serves 17 million people, including the population of Los Angeles. MWD is in search of new sources of water because California must reduce its take of Colorado River water, on which the district relies heavily.
In addition to selling the water, the company plans to use the site to store "surplus" water from the Colorado River, which is already so depleted that it no longer reaches the Pacific Ocean. The project alarms many ecologists and conservationists, who say this would devastate groundwater resources, dry out springs and wells, jeopardize threatened species and result in dust bowls on the scale of Owens Valley. The 35-mile pipeline and elaborate infrastructure that Cadiz wants to build could further damage habitats of imperiled animals and plants. As if that wisn't enough, testing in 2000 disclosed that the aquifer's water contains high levels of carcinogenic chromium 6. Chromium 6 is the toxic chemical found by activist Erin Brockovich in groundwater in Hinkley, a Mojave Desert town one hundred miles west of Cadiz.
Sacramento insiders have raised questions about the relationship between Cadiz CEO Keith Brackpool and Governor Gray Davis, who has the power to shape the outcome of the project. Brackpool was a leading contributor to Davis’ gubernatorial campaign. After scandal forced Davis to sever ties with representative Gary Condit, Central Valley politico and the Governor's longtime water policy maven, Brackpool has become Davis' leading water advisor.
In addition, John "Rusty" Areias, Director of the State Parks and Recreation Department, is a former Blackpool consultant and lobbyist. Providence Mountains State Park, a botanically diverse wildland astride the Providence Mountains, lies at the northern edge of the Cadiz aquifer. The effect of a potential aquifer drawdown on groundwater in the Providence Mountains is unknown.
Disruption of the water cycle in ranges closer to the project site is more certain. The Marble Mountains near Amboy sit atop the center of the aquifer; one of the Mojave's largest herds of bighorn sheep inhabits the Marbles' Trilobite Wilderness, and would likely perish if the mountains' springs dry up. Deep-rooted plants that tap into the native water table, known as phreatophytes, will also suffer if the aquifer is depleted.
Parts of the Cadiz aquifer underly the 25 million-acre California Desert Conservation Area, established by an act of Congress in 1980 "to ensure as nearly as humanly possible [that] the recognition that the California Desert is not a wasteland but a precious public resource."
Public Citizen activists maintain the EIR sidesteps the issue of the rate at which the Cadiz aquifer will be refilled by natural sources. The US Geological Survey has questioned Cadiz’s estimates. And the BLM has failed to define its authority over the project, thus shielding the nature and depth of its oversight role from public review. Limited BLM oversight would put the MWD and Cadiz in the position of policing themselves.
"To avoid an inherent conflict of interest, federal officials must take an active role to ensure that the taxpayers will not be ripped off," Kelly said. "Federal lands have already been plundered for their timber and minerals. Water should not be next on the list."