County supervisors have mishandled Cadiz project

Voice of the People
San Bernardino Sun

Regarding San Bernardino County increasing its legal fund to fight lawsuits over the Cadiz water project in Mojave, Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Janice Rutherford states, "We have scientists on all sides of the issue that have different views about how Cadiz's plans are going to affect the groundwater."

Well, no, Chairwoman, there are only two sides: that of Cadiz and the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD) in Orange County (the former of which stands to make millions off the water sales), and that of everyone else, including independent scientists of the United States Geological Survey and the National Parks Service who have contested virtually every assertion made by the scientists hired by Cadiz and SMWD.

A prudent individual would be wise to question the motives of a company poised to make millions off a project on which it is seeking approval, but perhaps the tens of thousands that Cadiz has made in campaign contributions to some county supervisors has clouded their judgment.

Rutherford also states that the county will be "closely monitoring the project."

In May 2012, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors adopted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in which they abdicated their "lead agency" rights to SMWD and also exempted the Cadiz water project from the San Bernardino Groundwater Management Ordinance. In doing so they also redefined the "annual overdraft" clause of the ordinance in which the county checks that the extraction of groundwater does not exceed the natural replenishment of such groundwater, from a yearly basis to a 10-year average. This means that the Cadiz project could operate with continual deficits (overdrafts) for at least a decade, creating an effective barrier to enforcement against harm to the aquifer. This is Rutherford's idea of "closely monitoring the project"?

The Board of Supervisors, whether through greed or ineptitude, has done the citizens of San Bernardino County a disservice in its handling of the Cadiz water project -- and for this we will pay dearly.

-- Paul Clement, Upland

San Bernardino County increases legal tab by $500,000 for Cadiz litigation

Joe Nelson, Staff Writer
San Bernardino Sun

The tab to defend San Bernardino County against nine lawsuits opposing a pipeline project environmentalists say will drain a swath of the Mojave Desert of precious groundwater grew to $1.5 million Tuesday after county supervisors approved an increase in legal costs.

The board authorized increasing its contract with the Sacramento law firm Downey Brand LLP by $500,000 - from $949,332 to $1.5 million.

The lawsuits allege, among other things, that the county violated state and federal environmental laws and San Bernardino County's own Desert Groundwater Management Plan by approving the Cadiz pipeline project.

The litigation is not costing taxpayers, as Cadiz Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company are reimbursing the county for its costs.

Nearly a dozen lawsuits have been filed since the project was approved last October. Two lawsuits have been dismissed since then by judges in state and federal courts.

Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District in Rancho Santa Margarita have teamed to pump groundwater from aquifers near the Mojave National Preserve over a 50-year period. The water would be diverted via a 43-mile pipeline to the Colorado River Aqueduct and stored, then sold to residents and businesses in south Orange County, and Rancho Santa Margarita.

The pipeline has yet to be built and would be constructed along an old railroad right of way.
"There's a lot of concern on the local level about this project, and I hope the county is going to be reimbursed for these costs because it's sad to think the county is actually spending a half a million dollars more of taxpayer money to give our water away," said David Lamfrom, California Desert Senior Program Manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, one of the agencies that has sued the county over the project.

Cadiz owns 45,000 acres in eastern San Bernardino County, most of which overlies the Cadiz and Bristol dry lake beds comprising the Fenner Valley aquifer system south of the Mojave National Preserve and northeast of Twentynine Palms. Cadiz and the Santa Margarita Water District plan to pump 50,000 acre feet of groundwater from the aquifers annually.

Delaware Tetra Technologies, a company that operates a brine mine in the Fenner Valley and depends on groundwater from the Bristol and Cadiz dry lake beds for its operations, argued in its lawsuit that the pipeline project would force the closure of its mine. Other organizations suing the county include the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Audubon Society and Sierra Club, and the International Union of North America Local Union No. 783.

Plaintiffs allege the county has relinquished most of the project's oversight to Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District.

"San Bernardino County decided not to be the lead agency, and we believe they were derelict in their responsibilities to protect their own groundwater," Lamfrom said. "Santa Margarita became the lead agency, and they stand to benefit from this water. That's the fox guarding the henhouse."

Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Janice Rutherford said there are different schools of thought on the potential impacts the project will have on the environment and on county residents and businesses. She said the county will be closely monitoring the project.

"We have scientists on all sides of the issue that have different views about how Cadiz's plans are going to affect the groundwater," Rutherford said. "The county's plan is to monitor what happens as it moves forward and then adjust responses based on what turns out to be fact. We try to put in safety valves so that if something starts to go wrong, then we act to correct it but still allow for the drawing of that water for human use."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein has opposed the project since it was first introduced more than a decade ago. In a letter to the Board of Supervisors in October, Feinstein urged the supervisors to oppose the project. She said that even if the amount of groundwater extracted annually were reduced from 2.5 million acre feet over the project's 50-year life span to 1 million acre feet, it would still be too much.

"I remain concerned because even with a 1 million acre foot cap, which translates to 20,000 acre feet annually, this amount still far exceeds the USGS recharge estimate and those of other independent groups," Feinstein said in her letter.

Project opponents say Cadiz overestimated the amount of annual precipitation that would recharge the groundwater basins in the Bristol and Fenner valleys, and that natural springs within the Mojave National Preserve were threatened because they are linked to the aquifers.

Officials at the Santa Margarita Water District could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Courtney Degener, vice president of investor relations for Cadiz, Inc., said in an e-mail that the company does not comment on pending litigation, but did say the company stands by the project, which is based on "the best science and a commitment to protecting the desert environment."

She also touched on the significance of the project.

"California water providers are currently engaged in serious efforts to identify new water supply options as a result of ongoing challenges to California's traditional water supplies and the Cadiz project offers a safe and sustainable supply that water providers throughout Southern California can rely on to meet their changing needs," Degener said.

Cadiz project bad policy, bad for economy

Opinion

By Dave Oeshner
San Bernardino Sun

There continues to be a lot of misinformation about the economic benefits and environmental impacts of the proposed Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project; and it's time to set the record straight.

As a concerned citizen of the small desert town of Amboy - with a population of 5 - and plant manager for the National Chloride Co. of America's Bristol Dry Lake operation, I am confident the Cadiz Project will kill jobs including my own, and stands to create a wide range of threats to our economy, air quality and natural resources.

I call on San Bernardino County citizens and our elected officials including the newly elected Rep. Paul Cook and our 1st District supervisor to take a strong stance in protecting our jobs and our communities by preventing this proposal from moving forward.

National Chloride Co. of America has produced liquid calcium chloride brine in its evaporative ponds on Bristol Dry Lake since the 1950s, but our roots go back to the 1930s. Our operations depend on a constant downhill flow of brine water from Fenner Gap and across Cadiz Inc. property and Bristol Dry Lake. This brine water picks up sodium and calcium minerals, essential to our production processes via our collection ditches and evaporative ponds. Products created are food-grade calcium chloride for canning, beer and cheese as well as industrial brines for construction materials, oil and gas production. Through our process sodium chloride is also produced for cattle feed, chicken feed and tanning cattle hides and road deicing.

Cadiz Inc. claims that the recharge rate of the Bristol and Fenner watersheds is 32,500 acre feet per year; but I've observed local weather patterns for almost 50 years and want to assure the public that's not the case. Last spring, we had zero rain; which was not unusual for the California desert. It doesn't take a mathematician to know that zero rain, while pumping 50,000 acre feet on average per year, puts the aquifers in the red, and stands to negatively impact our mining operation.

Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, increased irrigation on the Cadiz Farm for citrus and grapes lowered some nearby wells by 10 feet and they have never recovered. This small example is big evidence of how even limited pumping impacts this region's groundwater resources.

Cadiz also claims that draining Bristol and Cadiz dry lakes won't harm air quality. Bristol Dry Lake has a hard crust which can break up and create dust. When winter winds kick up higher than 15 miles per hour, it creates considerable dust storms. I've seen dust storms on Bristol Dry Lake diminish visibility to 10 feet. In my mind, the situation is similar to Owens Lake, which became the largest source of lung-harming pm10 pollutants in the entire United States. Deprived of water, Bristol Dry Lake will create more dust and also harm air quality.

For more than 50 years, National Chloride Co. of America has employed people, created significant revenue, provided a great tax base for San Bernardino County, and supplied a natural product that helps the economy. Our business is already stressed by paying increased governmental maintenance fees for our mining claims and this expense has increased from $17,000 to over $135,000 in just a few years. Now we stand to be ruined by the Cadiz pumping, with negative impacts to companies who purchase from us, and consumers who purchase cheese, beer, feed and construction materials.

Cadiz seems eerily reminiscent of the Old West when ranchers upstream deprived those downstream of water critical for their herds. Fast forward to present day; it's the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project that stands to block water from our long-standing mining operation and run us out of business. We've been here over the long haul. The Cadiz project, on the other hand, is a newcomer that jeopardizes our investment and contribution to the economy. It should not move forward.

Dave Oeshner is plant manager of the National Chloride Co. of America.

BrightSource Seeks Changes In Ivanpah Tortoise Plan

by Chris Clarke

KCET

BrightSource Energy, developer of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System now under construction in the California desert, wants to change how it mitigates its project effects on the federally threatened desert tortoise. The company has filed a request last week to amend the project's permit with the California Energy Commission (CEC) allowing it to protect tortoise habitat elsewhere in the Mojave Desert rather than in the Ivanpah Valley, as the permit now requires.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is being built on almost 4,000 acres of what was once prime desert tortoise habitat in the Ivanpah Valley, which straddles the California-Nevada line south of Las Vegas. Slated for completion in 2013, the 370-megawatt solar thermal project was briefly halted in 2011 when workers found hundreds more of the threatened reptile on the site than surveys had predicted.

As part of the required mitigation of the project's impacts on desert tortoise habitat, BrightSource agreed in 2010 to a number of land protection measures including either buying or acquiring conservation easements on att least 175 acres of desert wash habitat in the same watershed as the project. The company now says that the Ivanpah Valley doesn't have sufficient connected lands to make that feasible. BrightSource wants to be able to meet the project's mitigation requirements through the California Department of Fish and Game's Advance Mitigation Land Acquisition Grants (AMLAG) program, in which the agency acquires mitigation lands with funds paid into a state trust fund by project developers.

The portion of the Ivanpah Valley where Ivanpah SEGS is located is neither an Area of Critical Environmental Concern nor a designated or proposed Desert Wildlife Management Area, nor is it designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as critical habitat for any species. With respect to cumulative impacts and related issues, the presence of 1-15, Nipton Road, the Primm Valley Golf Club, Primm itself, and the Union Pacific Railroad railway has not only permanently altered drainage patterns but, along with Ivanpah Playa itself, substantially fragmented desert tortoise habitat in Ivanpah Valley. These barriers also limit the value of the available private land parcels in the Ivanpah Valley due to their lack of potential to promote habitat connectivity.

The nearly 200,000-acre Ivanpah Valley actually offers a fair amount of potential connected tortoise habitat. It's true that some few thousand acres have been developed for Primm and its associated golf course, but those developments are clustered in a relatively small section in the central valley. Interstate 15 and the railroad line similarly disrupt connectivity between the east and west sides of the valley, but offer little obstruction to the north-south migration that will become especially crucial for tortoise survival as the globe warms.

Taking advantage of the AMLAG program would allow BrightSource to pay the state to protect land in other parts of the desert. BrightSource's petition to the Energy Commission identifies other areas in the Mojave that offer potential mitigation land opportunities:

Suitable lands have been identified within the Cady Mountain-Hidden Valley, Fremont-Kramer/Superior-Cronese, and Chuckwalla property groupings. These lands are located either within a proposed Desert Wildlife Management Area, or within a proposed Wilderness Area. Additionally, these lands are private parcels that currently fragment the proposed Desert Wildlife Management Area or Wilderness Area.

That's a laudable goal, though not one that does much to remedy any harms done to the Ivanpah Valley's tortoises, which U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) studies indicate may have been genetically isolated for millennia from tortoises elsewhere in the California Desert. In February, in an assessment of the tortoise's status across its range, the FWS described the long-term geographic barriers that have caused Ivanpah Valley tortoises to evolve a unique genome:

Saline Valley and Death Valley extending south into Silurian Valley and Soda Dry Lake act as a barrier between this recovery unit and the Western Mojave Recovery Unit. Although gene flow likely occurred intermittently during favorable conditions across this western edge of the recovery unit, this area contains a portion of the Baker Sink, a low-elevation, extremely hot and arid strip that extends from Death Valley to Bristol Dry Lake. This area is generally inhospitable for desert tortoises.

Desert pipeline would send water to Inland Valley

Environmental documents for certifying the project expected to be ready within weeks

By Andrew Edwards
Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

Water providers serving the Inland Valley and other Southern California areas may be able to draw from a new source of water sufficient to supply 100,000 households if plans for a Mojave Desert pipeline pass environmental muster.

The Cadiz Co., headquartered in downtown Los Angeles, wants to build a 42-mile pipeline to carry water from a remote desert aquifer in the Cadiz Valley to the Colorado River Aqueduct to be delivered to the Los Angeles basin.

The Claremont-based Three Valleys Municipal Water District and the San Dimas-based Golden State Water Co. are poised to be among the agencies receiving water from the pipeline, if it is actually built.

"We're always looking for water in other places in case the big earthquake hits," Three Valleys board President Bob Kuhn said.

Three Valleys wholesales water to providers serving customers in east Los Angeles County communities, including Pomona and Claremont.

Kuhn said Three Valleys has an option agreement to buy the water if the project is approved.

Environmental documents for the Cadiz pipeline have yet to be released, although a spokeswoman for the water agency charged with certifying the project said this week they are expected to be ready for review within the next few weeks.

"We're still looking at releasing the draft environmental impact report sometime," said Michelle Miller, spokeswoman for the Santa Margarita Water District.

The Santa Margarita Water District serves south Orange County and has been designated as the lead agency for the project. Its board will be responsible for reviewing and deciding whether to approve Cadiz Co.'s environmental report.

The project could create the equivalent of 745 full-time jobs, according to a consultant.

The Cadiz Co. owns 35,000 acres in the Cadiz Valley, roughly 11 miles southeast of Amboy, once a stopping point for Route 66 travelers.

Cadiz and Bristol dry lakes - and the aquifer that lies below the desert surface - can be found in Cadiz Valley. The landowners currently use the water for lemon groves, vineyards and other crops grown on their Mojave Desert property.

But if Cadiz Co.'s proposal becomes a reality, the company would build a 42-mile pipeline along an existing railroad right-of-way to a place called Rice, near Highway 62, east of Twentynine Palms.

"Why do it? It's sort of like asking, `Why conserve?" said Cadiz Co. President and General Counsel Scott Slater.

The projected construction cost approaches $278 million over a two-year period.

The work could create the equivalent of 593 full-time jobs for those directly working on the pipeline and an additional 152 jobs at businesses supporting Cadiz Co., according to a forecast from Redlands-based economist John Husing, who focuses on the Inland Empire.

"I would guess they (the new hires) would be living in the Victor Valley or Barstow, given where the facility is," Husing said.

The project's $258.5 million second phase would require the construction of a parallel pipeline to recharge, or store excess Colorado River water in the Cadiz Valley aquifer.

Cadiz Co. hired Husing at a $10,000 commission to prepare an economic impact report for the project.

The firm's executives have yet to release the proposal's draft environmental impact report. It is set to be released this summer.

Utility expresses interest in water project

By JANET ZIMMERMAN
The Press-Enterprise





Western Municipal Water District in Riverside is among five Southern California suppliers that have expressed interest in a controversial proposal to store and draw water from ancient aquifers in the Mojave Desert, officials confirmed Thursday.

The $200 million project in the Cadiz Valley, about 40 miles east of Twentynine Palms, would involve burying 44 miles of pipeline to move surplus Colorado River water to an underground basin the size of Rhode Island.

The water rights under 35,000 acres belong to Cadiz Inc., which also wants to tap water from beneath nearby dry lake beds that it says would otherwise be lost to evaporation.

The Los Angeles-based company announced last month that five water providers signed letters of intent to evaluate the project and share the costs of an environmental review, with options to buy the water. Cadiz Inc. identified Golden State Water Co. in San Dimas, a private company serving desert communities in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, as one of the interested parties but would not identify the others until an agreement is reached.

However, Anaheim Public Utilities, serving 110,000 customers, also has signed "a non-binding letter of interest" on the project, spokeswoman Margie Otto said.

Western's general manager, John Rossi, acknowledged that his district is considering joining the project, which would divert water from the Colorado River Aqueduct for storage. In dry times, the water would be returned to the aqueduct for use by customers. Western serves Corona, Norco, Lake Elsinore and parts of Murrieta, Temecula and Riverside.

"We're just trying to understand the technical merits at this point. We think the project may be able to provide some additional reliability," said Rossi, whose district gets most of its water from Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which built and operates the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct.

Cost is a factor, he said.

Water from the project will cost more than supplies from MWD, which charges about $600 per acre-foot for untreated water and $800 per acre-foot for treated supplies. The Cadiz water could cost an additional $278 per acre-foot and up to $445 more per acre-foot if it's treated, according to the district's published rate table. An acre-foot is enough to serve two families for a year.

But MWD rates have increased 35 percent in the past couple of years and are expected to jump 20 percent next year, he said, so "we're going to compare the two, and may the best price win."

Officials at Western will decide within the next couple of months whether to move forward with the environmental study, Rossi said.

The Cadiz project has been rejected and reworked in the eight years since it was first proposed.

Environmentalists say it would deplete ancient groundwater that feeds area springs and sustains local wildlife. One-third of the aquifer sits below the Mojave National Preserve.

Joshua Tree resident Elden Hughes, former chairman of the Sierra Club's desert committee, said his group worries about mixing salty Colorado River water with the pure Cadiz groundwater that is thousands of years old.

He also questioned the wisdom of drawing water from just under the surface of Bristol Dry Lake. Without the moisture, dust would threaten air quality of Mojave National Preserve, Hughes said.

Cadiz Inc. already is pumping from the aquifer to water grapes, citrus and vegetables the company grows in the area. Drawing off more would deplete the aquifer, Hughes said.

Scott Slater, general counsel for Cadiz Inc., said the plan has been reformulated to address environmental concerns. The company has partnered with the Natural Heritage Institute to ensure the project's sustainability, will allow solar development on up to 20,000 acres and is open to dedicating land for open space.

The project isn't limited to Colorado River water, he said. Water could be added to the pipeline system through exchanges with other sources and stored there. It also would capture tens of thousands of acre-feet of water that is now lost to evaporation, Slater said.

The project has changed quite a bit since it was rejected in 2002 by MWD, which was to be a partner and help build the pipeline. The agency backed out because of cost and environmental concerns.

Officials at MWD said Thursday that they were unaware of the latest on the project.

"Our questions deal with making sure there would be capacity in the aqueduct to accommodate any transfer, and would the participants be willing to pay the full system access fee -- the wheeling rates. Those are our considerations," said Bob Muir, MWD spokesman.