Here’s why Cadiz company says it’s taking ‘a little pause’ from its desert water project
By JIM STEINBERG
San Bernardino Sun
LOS ANGELES--Fresh from gaining the long-sought federal approval for its massive desert water project, Scott Slater, Cadiz president and CEO, said it’s time for the project to “slow down” a bit.
“We are going to take a little pause…and double our effort to allow people to understand this project,” Slater said. “We believe people should support an innovative project like ours.
The Cadiz project involves pumping billions of gallons of water annually from an underground aquifer in a remote part of the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County. The water would be piped to parts of Orange County and other locations, which could include San Bernardino County. Cadiz water could serve as many as 400,000 people.
This year, with the Trump administration running the Interior Department and Bureau of Land Management, the Cadiz project gained momentum.
The Obama administration had not supported the desert water project.
One environmentalist who has studied and followed the project for years, said pausing at this point strikes an odd note.
“They have waited years for this clearance, and now, after getting the blessing from the BLM, they take a pause?” said David Lamfrom, California Desert and National Wildlife Programs director with the National Parks Conservation Association.
Lamfrom said he believes the pause is really because the California Lands Commission has recently surfaced as a possible stumbling block to the project.
Cadiz downplays that notion.
“We want to be having conversations with stakeholders and decision makers,” Slater said of the company’s focus for the remaining weeks of the year.
Last month the Lands Commission wrote Cadiz, saying the company needs to fill out an application for a lease permit on a 200-foot-wide by 1-mile long slice of the project’s proposed 43-mile pipeline.
However, Cadiz management does not consider the state’s request to be a significant impediment. Whether the proposed use of railroad right-of-way falls within the state’s permit, issued in June 1910, is something for “an impartial judge” to decide, not the state land commission, the company contends.
Cadiz and Slater, are riding a crest, at least on the federal level. Much has changed in the past two years.
Legal turn-around
In October 2015 the Cadiz project was dealt a major setback when the Obama Administration’s Bureau of Land Management rejected the company’s use of an 1875 railway right-of-way to build a critical pipeline.
In statements, Cadiz has said that the BLM’s October 2015 evaluation “not only impeded the Cadiz Water Project but also set a troubling precedent for thousands of miles of existing uses of railroad rights-of-way in the West.”
Things began to change in September. The project got a huge boost when the Interior Department’s Office of the Solicitor issued an opinion which appeared to allow construction of a 43-mile pipeline from Fenner Valley — about 40 miles northeast of Twentynine Palms — to the Colorado River Aqueduct, where it could deliver water to potential customers.
Nevertheless, the opinion didn’t provide a clear green light.
The definitive victory came in October, when Michael D. Nedd, BLM acting director, cemented the government’s about-face in a letter to Slater.
The letter said the BLM’s October 2015 interpretation of the law no longer represents the agency’s viewpoint and has been rescinded. It also said the scope of the proposed activity does not require BLM authorization.
Groups opposed to the project were outraged.
“This just confirms what the administration has been signaling (since Donald Trump was sworn in as president). They will bend heaven and earth to try to move the Cadiz project forward,” Lamfrom said.
Slater has a different viewpoint:
The action of October 2015 was a “bogus act by the BLM” that took “two years for them to get right.”
Support for the project originated, not from the Trump administration, but a broadly based group of business and political leaders who advocated for what they believe is a good project, Slater said.
Labor groups, including North America’s Building Trades Unions, wrote Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, supporting the project, Slater said.
After receiving the BLM’s favorable ruling, Cadiz said it would turn its attention to final engineering design, contract arrangements with participating agencies and a conveyance agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.
Although the engineering plans are proceeding, Cadiz is not immediately applying to the Metropolitan water district for use of pipelines to transport its Mojave Desert water to customers. That will happen early next year, said Courtney Degener, a Cadiz spokeswoman.
Misconceptions
Slater said a major misconception he wants to address stems from an allegation that Sen. Dianne Feinstein made in late September. Feinstein, D-Calif., said allowing Cadiz water into the Metropolitan Water District’s system “could endanger the health of not only Cadiz’s customers but all 19 million Californians who rely on that water.”
Feinstein, who has long opposed the Cadiz project, contends the desert water is polluted with arsenic and Chromium-6.
Although Slater did not mention Feinstein by name, he said no company in California or the United States would be allowed to put water into a drinking water supply pipeline that does not meet state and federal standards.
Shortly after Feinstein questioned the safety of using the desert water, Cadiz issued a statement calling Feinstein’s remarks “irresponsible and not true.”
A state agency tasked with protecting California’s water supply seemed to back up the Cadiz company.
“Any water system that wants to bring on a new source of water must have the new source permitted, which would include sampling the new source for water quality before it was put into use,” said Andrew DiLuccia, spokesman for the State Water Resources Control Board.
Ongoing battle
For a time, the project faced a threat by a Feinstein-backed bill in the state Legislature that would have prohibited the Cadiz water transfer unless the state Lands Commission, in consultation with the Department of Fish and Wildlife, finds the project “will not adversely affect the natural or cultural resources, including groundwater resources or habitat, of those federal and state lands.”
But in early September, AB 1000, the bill to block Cadiz, was itself blocked in the state Senate Appropriations Committee.
A short time later, however, the state Lands Commission, asserted that it owned a 200-foot wide by one-mile long parcel along the path Cadiz plans to use for its 43-mile pipeline.
The Lands Commission’s chairman is Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, who along with Gov. Jerry Brown, supported AB1000.
The Lands Commission sent Cadiz an application for it to complete. After Cadiz submits its application, commission staff members will analyze land ownership and the level of environmental documentation to be required before a decision is made, the state agency said in a letter to Cadiz.
The company is questioning the request.
Cadiz will comply with any “lawful condition” imposed by the Lands Commission but does not intend to fill out an application before there can be a discussion about what this state agency is seeking from Cadiz, Slater said.
