Animal Predatory Behavior Decreases Near Desert Wind Turbines, Study Finds

"These findings could be helpful in assisting managers to design future wind energy facilities with species in mind."

Wind turbines overlooking Whitewater Creek and Interstate 10 near Palm Springs, California. (PHOTO: David McNew / Getty Images News / Getty Images)

By Patch CA (Patch Staff)
Patch Banning

PALM SPRINGS, CA – A study conducted at the windmills near Palm Springs showed that predators are less likely to attack prey living near the wind turbines, including desert tortoises that burrow in the Coachella Valley.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis and the U.S. Geological Survey employed motion-activated cameras facing the entrances of 46 active desert tortoise burrows at the 5.2-square-kilometer wind energy facility.

They found that predators are far more likely to visit the tortoises' burrows near dirt roads and far less likely to visit burrows close to turbines.

The five predator species monitored included bobcats, gray foxes, coyotes, black bears and western spotted skunks, who scientists say were not actively hunting the tortoises but seeking smaller prey that frequently live in desert tortoise burrows.

"These findings could be helpful in assisting managers to design future wind energy facilities with species in mind," said lead author Mickey Agha. "There may be benefits to adding space between turbines and increasing the number of dirt roads, to potentially provide habitat for sensitive terrestrial wildlife."

Scientists behind the study -- which was published in the April issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management -- say the findings show that the design of wind energy infrastructure impacts animal behavior, an area of study rarely touched on.

"There is little information on predator-prey interactions in wind energy landscapes in North America, and this study provides a foundation for learning more," said Jeffrey Lovich, USGS scientist and study co-author.

"Further investigation of causes that underlie road and wind turbine effects, such as ground vibrations, sound emission and traffic volume, could help provide a better understanding of wildlife responses to wind energy development," he said.

Iconic Mojave Joshua trees in race against extinction

Researcher Chris Smith checks blooms to see if field assistant Candace Fallon will be able to introduce Yucca moths to blooms on Joshua trees in the Mojave desert during research on Apr. 07, 2011. The iconic plant of the Mojave Desert also provides a perfect example of what scientists call coevolution. The Joshua Tree and the Yucca moth have developed together and now they depend on each other for reproduction. (JESSICA EBELHAR/LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL)

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A century from now, the Mojave Desert’s iconic plant could be pushing its way into new territory or teetering on the brink of extinction.

This spring, a pair of researchers will go looking for clues to the Joshua tree’s fate in a lonesome valley 140 miles north of Las Vegas. And they’re inviting interested “citizen scientists” to join them in their search.

Henderson-based ecologist Todd Esque, from the U.S. Geological Survey, and evolutionary biologist Chris Smith, from Willamette University in Salem, Ore., are offering a four-day course in March called “The Race North: Population Ecology of Joshua Trees In an Era of Climate Change.”

The class will unfold in Tikaboo Valley, near the Lincoln County town of Rachel, where Smith said Joshua trees seem to be “experiencing something of a population boom” at the northern limit of their current range, possibly in response to increasingly warmer, drier conditions to the south.

Such research matters, Esque said, because it could help scientists predict how much of a challenge climate change will pose for Joshua trees and for people. “We’re all in this together,” he said.

“Any time these large climatic events occur, some things blink out and some things survive and create new species,” he said. “If Joshua trees can respond quickly enough and spread their seeds far enough with each jump, they will continue to thrive out there.”

“It’s a population on the move as far as I’m concerned.”

Some computer models predict the Joshua tree could disappear from much of the Mojave Desert, as average temperatures rise and droughts grow longer and more frequent.

Smith said scientists have found evidence that the trees are already fading from parts of Joshua Tree National Park at the southern end of its range.

Tikaboo Valley serves as an ideal “natural laboratory” for studying the species because that’s where the two main varieties of Joshua tree — one from the east, the other from the west — come together and mix.

“It is possible to do a side-by-side comparison of which of the two plants are likely to win ‘The Race North,’ and how the reliance on specialized pollinators might limit their capacity to escape changing climate,” Smith said in an email.

This is his area of expertise. Smith has spent the past decade studying the highly specialized evolutionary bond between the Joshua tree and the tiny moth that pollinates it.

Each spring, yucca moths emerge from the ground to mate and lay eggs in the flowers of Joshua trees in Nevada, California and Arizona. But unlike bees and other insects that inadvertently spread pollen from flower to flower, these moths appear to deliberately pollinate Joshua trees so that the plants will produce seeds that eventually will feed the moth’s caterpillars when they hatch.

Simply put, the Joshua tree would not exist without the plain-looking moth about the length of a pencil eraser, and the moth would not exist without the tree.

Smith is studying how natural selection is involved in shaping this tight relationship between plant and insect — and whether their bond can live through climate change and the tree’s own race for survival. Last year, he received a prestigious, $850,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his research for the next five years at least.

For his part, Esque has spent 10 years trying to produce the first comprehensive understanding of the tree’s life history. Along the way, he has amassed one of the most complete sets of data about where the trees occur and co-authored a study showing that only the largest, oldest Joshuas tend to survive wildfires — a finding Smith called “worrying” since fires have become more common in the Mojave Desert.

This marks the second time Smith has hosted a citizen science expedition to the Tikaboo Valley. He offered a similar class last year, minus the emphasis on climate change.

Registration is now underway for the course, which is being sponsored by the Desert Institute at Joshua Tree National Park in California. It takes place March 21-24 and costs $260, not including food, lodging, supplies and transportation to and from Tikaboo Valley.

Esque said the class will begin with a lecture on “why are we here and why does it matter.” Then the group will divide up into teams and walk the valley with GPS units, measuring trees and collecting genetic samples.

On the final day, Smith, Esque and their students will discuss what the collected data might tell them about the Joshua tree’s march north through Nevada and whether the species can survive long enough to get wherever it’s going.

Drones to spy on Southern Nevada wildlife, not people

A U.S. Geological Survey THawk drone lifts off on April 3 during an aerial survey of abandoned dump sites in the Mojave National Preserve in California, about 80 miles south of Las Vegas. (U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY)

By HENRY BREAN
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

A few months from now, government agents with drones will descend on Southern Nevada to spy on the locals.

Luckily, mule deer and bighorn sheep don’t carry ACLU cards.

The U.S. Geological Survey started using unmanned aircraft for wildlife and land management work about two years ago. Its first Nevada mission, planned for August or September, involves counting sheep and deer within the Desert National Wildlife Refuge north of Las Vegas.

What used to require a helicopter and thousands of dollars worth of fuel can now be done with some fresh batteries and what looks like an elaborate toy plane no bigger than a turkey vulture.

Mike Hutt, who heads up the Geological Survey’s National Unmanned Aircraft Systems Project Office in Denver, says there has been a “groundswell” of Department of Interior drone use in recent years, as cash-strapped field offices look for ways to do more work with less money.

In coming months, the USGS plans to use unmanned aircraft to track eagles and trumpeter swans in Idaho and Washington state, spot invasive plants at Utah’s Zion National Park and search the Oregon coast for debris from the 2011 tsunami that struck Japan.

Hutt says that his agency got its first military-surplus drone in 2009 and flew its first real mission in 2011. His office now has about a dozen missions under its belt, with at least nine more planned later this year.

‘SURVEILLANCE SOCIETY’

Widening domestic use of unmanned aircraft comes as the American Civil Liberties Union and others call for clear policies and restrictions designed to prevent the creation of a “surveillance society.”

Hutt is sensitive to privacy concerns and says virtually all his office’s work takes place on public land: “When we fly we let people in the local area know and invite them out. We try to be as trans­parent as possible.”

With rare exception, the drones operate at no more than 400 feet altitude and at least five miles from the nearest home. “We don’t fly over populated areas,” Hutt says.

In fact, they rarely fly over private property. When they do, they get written permission from the land owner in advance. They also have to get Federal Aviation Administration clearance.

The Geological Survey now has drone systems stationed in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho and Montana, and uses two types of aircraft: a battery-powered, fixed-wing airplane called the Raven and a gas-burning helicopter called the THawk.

Neither resembles an advanced, unmanned warplane such as the Predator or the Reaper. These look more like something you might buy in a hobby shop.

The Raven weighs less than five pounds and measures less than five feet from wing tip to wing tip. It is easily lifted with one hand and launched into the air the way you might toss a paper airplane.

It flies quietly, but landings are rarely pretty. The plane is designed to break apart on impact to avoid permanent damage, so there is often some assembly required before the next flight.

At 18 pounds, the THawk is heavier and less graceful in the air, but it provides more stable images because it can hover. The trade-off comes in the form of noise and general obnoxiousness.

“It sounds like a chain saw flying overhead,” Hutt says. “It’s been described as a flying trash can.”

Drone pilots also seem to prefer one vehicle over the other.

“The Raven is pretty fun,” says Jeff Sloan, a cartographer by trade who now gets to steer unmanned airplanes with a hand-held controller any young hobbyist would probably recognize. “I imagine teenagers are better at flying them than us older guys.”

The THawk is steered with a laptop computer.

Both drone systems are small and light enough for easy transport. Depending on how far they have to go for a mission, operators either transport the aircraft to the site by ground or ship them by overnight mail.

The Raven tends to be better for wildlife work because it is quieter, though drone operators have been surprised by the reaction — or lack of one — they have gotten so far from some of their THawk surveillance subjects.

“We flew 75 feet over sandhill cranes, and they didn’t seem to pay any attention to us as they roosted at night,” Hutt recalls. “I think critters in the field grow to accept certain things as a threat, and they don’t see us as a threat yet.”

Last month, Sloan and company traveled to Mojave National Preserve in California, about 80 miles south of Las Vegas, where they scanned several square miles from the air in search of trash piles and illegal dump sites for eventual cleanup.

OTHER USES FOR IMAGES

After looking at the high-resolution pictures from the drone, the staff at the desert park dreamed up other uses for the images, including a Joshua tree inventory and a study of invasive weed concentrations.

Sloan says that happens a lot. Once people see what the machines are capable of, they want more. “ ‘Can you do this while you’re up there?’ That’s pretty typical,” he says. “Really the applications are limitless.”

Hutt says that drones could prove useful for finding missing hikers, spotting wildfires, monitoring crops, refining maps, surveying archeological sites and inspecting canals, power lines, pipelines, fences and dams.

Already, biologists use them to track and count protected species, including some that seem too small and well-camouflaged to be spotted from the air.

Sloan recently used drones outfitted with thermal and high-definition cameras to identify and count sage grouse in Colorado. The birds are about the size of an average chicken, but the crew was able to spot them from 150 feet above.

“I didn’t think it would work,” Hutt says.

Once the FAA approves a mission, the drone team can deploy in just a few days.

The work is done on the cheap by using off-the-shelf equipment such as the high-definition cameras now favored by skydivers, snowboarders and dirtbike riders who like to film their death-defying stunts.

The drones have “close to zero maintenance and operational costs,” so a week-long mission like the one planned in Nevada can be done for as little as $3,000 in labor expenses.

The standard way of counting bighorn sheep and mule deer — namely by putting people in a helicopter — typically costs $20,000 to $40,000, Hutt says.

FOLLOW-UP COUNT

After an initial count in August or September, the drone crew will likely return to the desert north of Las Vegas next spring for a follow-up count of newborn lambs and fawns.

Coincidentally, the search area is not far from Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, a hub for the military’s considerably less benign use of unmanned aircraft.

Hutt and Sloan say they have no plans to arm their drones and try to use them, for example, to tranquilize large game. But you could tell the suggestion got their wheels turning.

Ultimately Hutt doesn’t worry too much about where all this drone use might lead.

“I think people are too busy to fly a UAV over my house,” he says. “They’d be pretty bored watching me out there mowing the lawn anyway.”

Like them or not, drones are sure to become more and more prevalent as the technology improves, Hutt says. “I don’t even think that we know all the possible applications.”

Adds Sloan, the map maker turned remote pilot: “I think we’re just scratching the surface. Every time we go out, we have a hundred other ideas.”

California desert aquifers contain high chemical levels

Sunset at the New York Mountains in the Mojave Desert. (Courtesy National Park Service)

The Associated Press
Tribune - San Luis Obispo

MOJAVE, Calif. — More aquifers in the Southern California desert contained high levels of arsenic, boron, fluoride and other naturally occurring elements compared with the rest of the state, a study released Wednesday found.

Federal scientists only looked at the presence of contaminants in raw, untreated groundwater and did not analyze tap water. Water agencies typically treat groundwater supplies to make drinking water and to comply with health standards.

Trace elements were found in high concentrations in 35 percent of groundwater used for public supply in the desert, compared with 10 to 25 percent elsewhere in the state.

One reason is that groundwater pumped from the desert tends to be older than groundwater pumped from other parts of the state, allowing more time for it to mix with elements found naturally in rocks and soil.

The study was conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists tested groundwater samples from wells in the desert - including the Antelope Valley, Coachella Valley, Indian Wells Valley, Owens Valley, Mojave area, and the Colorado River basin - and around the state between 2004 and last year.

State and federal regulators and water agencies have long known about the existence of these elements in desert aquifers, but this is the most comprehensive assessment of groundwater quality in the desert.

Groups "are actively working to manage local groundwater resources and assure that water delivered to consumers meets water-quality standards," Miranda Fram, who heads the USGS groundwater monitoring program, said in a statement.

Besides studying the presence of naturally occurring contaminants, researchers looked at the role of human activity and found little impact on groundwater quality: High levels of solvents, pesticides and nitrates, typically associated with runoff from industries, agriculture and homes, were found in less than 1 percent of desert aquifers.

The USGS continues to monitor water quality in more than 100 groundwater basins around the state.

Environmentalists sue over Cadiz water project

Karen Tracy of Joshua Tree protests a groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project outside a San Bernardino County Supervisors meeting last month. (KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN
Press-Enterprise

Four environmental groups filed their second lawsuit against San Bernardino County on Thursday, Nov. 1, over a hotly contested proposal to pump water from Mojave Desert aquifers and send it to cities across the state.

The Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project would extract groundwater from an open valley beneath 45,000 acres that Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. owns south of the Marble Mountains, 40 miles east of Twentynine Palms. The area lies between the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park in eastern San Bernardino County.

The $225 million project would provide water for about 400,000 people served by six water districts throughout California, including Jurupa Community Services District in Riverside County.

On Oct. 1, county supervisors approved a groundwater management plan for the project that would allow them to shut down operations when the water table drops to a certain threshold. That action gave the go-ahead for the plan to pump 50,000 acre-feet per year.

In their lawsuit, the Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club San Gorgonio chapter and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society say San Bernardino County failed to provide an environmental review and did not comply with its own groundwater ordinance, designed to protect resources in the desert.

“This shortsighted water grab will benefit those pushing more sprawl in Orange County, but it’ll rob some of California’s rare species of the water they need to survive,” said Adam Lazar, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Our desert, the residents of San Bernardino County and Orange County ratepayers all deserve better.”

County spokesman David Wert disagreed. “We believe the groundwater ordinance was adhered to and the approval followed the county’s procedures. It was proper and in the best interests of the county and the environment.”

This is the third lawsuit challenging the project. The same four environmental groups filed a lawsuit Aug. 31 against San Bernardino County and an Orange County water district, contending the county should have led the environmental review of the project, not the Santa Margarita Water District in Mission Viejo, which has signed on as a future buyer of the water from Cadiz Inc.

The water district is named in the August suit for approving the environmental impact report on the project on July 31.

Also suing is Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which operates a brine mining operation at two dry lakes near Cadiz Inc.’s property. The company filed suit against San Bernardino County and Santa Margarita Water District, saying they violated state environmental law by not making the county the lead agency, instead of Santa Margarita.

Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who has received more than $48,000 in campaign contributions from Cadiz in the past five years, has said the project would benefit the county by creating jobs and providing a hedge against uncertain water supplies from Northern California.

Environmentalists said the pumping would cause a drop in the water table that would dry up springs supporting bighorn sheep and other wildlife, could cause dust storms on nearby dry lake beds that would adversely affect air quality, and overdraw the water table.

Board Endorses LA & Orange Counties Draining Desert Aquifer

San Bernardino County Sentinel

Seth Shteir, of the National Parks Conservation Association, speaks during a protest of the groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project, before the San Bernardino County Supervisors meeting, on Monday, October 1, 2012. (KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

In an action of historic proportion, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors on October 1 voted 4-1 to allow a water extraction project in the east Mojave Desert to proceed, removing the last procedural obstacle to a Los Angeles-based company’s plan to profit from the exportation of billions of gallons of San Bernardino County’s water up to 230 miles westward for sale and use in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside counties.

Notably, San Bernardino County was not the lead agency on the project. Rather, Monday’s hearing was a formality required under the terms of a memorandum of understanding between the company undertaking the project, Cadiz, Inc., and Orange County-based Santa Margarita Water District, which served as the agency-of-record for the approval of the project and its environmental certification, and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, an entity owned by Cadiz, Inc. The county by its action signed off on the Santa Margarita Water District’s approval of the project and certification of the environmental impact report, and it approved a groundwater management, monitoring, and mitigation plan to facilitate it.

On July 31, the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley and serves the affluent communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza, Las Flores, Ladera Ranch and Talega, approved the project, officially known as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation and Recovery Project, certified the environmental impact report for the project and agreed to purchase 20 percent of the water Cadiz, Inc. drafts as a consequence of that approval. The environmental impact report states that Cadiz, Inc. can draw an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water per year from the desert aquifer for the next century.

The controversial plan was given go-ahead over the strident objections of desert residents and landowners, who said they viewed the project as an unprincipled theft of the desert’s water resource by Cadiz, Inc. and the water district. Environmentalists registered opposition to the project, asserting the amount of water to be extracted from the desert will exceed the natural recharge rate of the region’s groundwater basins, that springs within the immediate area of the project’s well field will dry up, and near-lying aquifers that are linked to the Cadiz Valley and Fenner Valley’s water tables will be depleted.

While Scott Slater, the president and general counsel for the Cadiz Land Company, and Christian Marsh, an attorney representing the county of San Bernardino, asserted that the October 1 hearing fulfills all of the procedural requirements for the project to proceed, John Goss, a former assistant administrative officer with San Bernardino County who had worked for 18 months drafting the county’s desert groundwater management ordinance before it was adopted in 2002, said that ordinance was violated when the memorandum of understanding between the county, Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District had been entered into before a groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project was adopted. There were also suggestions that the county had failed to live up to its own procedural requirements when it failed to provide a ten-day public review of the documentation considered by the board on October 1. That documentation, consisting of the groundwater management, monitoring, and mitigation plan, was not made available until September 26.

The board of supervisors would have normally been the lead agency responsible for approving the project and granting it environmental certification. After Cadiz, Inc. arranged for the Santa Margarita Water District to commandeer that process, San Bernardino County officials initially contemplated filing an appeal with the California Office of Planning and Research to wrest from Santa Margarita authority over the project and its application for approval. The county, however, did not file such an appeal and acceded to the Santa Margarita Water District’s assumption of lead agency authority over the project application and environmental certification. Earlier this year, the county upon a vote by the board of supervisors entered into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District that gave the county limited power to second-guess the district’s decision on the environmental certification and compliance with its own ground water management ordinance as well as requiring that Cadiz, Inc. defray the cost of any legal action taken by parties against the project or in reaction to its impacts.

The project still faces four legal challenges.

A brine mining operation in the desert, Tetra Technologies, has already filed a lawsuit against San Bernardino County over the memorandum of understanding. Tetra alleges the monopolization of water in the area will harm its operation.

Four environmental groups – the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association, the San Gorgonio chapter of the Sierra Club and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society – filed a suit in San Bernardino County Superior Court, naming both the county of San Bernardino and the Santa Margarita Water District. That suit asserts the county should not have allowed the environmental review of the project to be carried out by the Mission Viejo-based Santa Margarita Water District. The suit challenges the county for allowing Santa Margarita to assume lead agency status and calls into question as well the water district’s approval of the environmental impact report.

The Colorado River branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association filed suit in federal court against Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and San Bernardino County, further naming the Santa Margarita Water District, project proponent Cadiz, Inc. and the Cadiz, Inc. corporate offshoot Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, as real parties in interest. That suit cited the failure of Salazar and the Department of the Interior to invoke the protocols and requirements of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, as well as the National Environmental Protection Act, which the association maintains should have been done because part of the project will involve a 42-mile right-of-way for the aqueduct on federal land. The suit further alleges the county failed to live up to its obligation to comply with federal law in reviewing the impact a permitted project might have on federal public resources in transferring the authority for environmental certification of the project to the Santa Margarita Water District.

A group of Orange County residents calling itself Citizens and Ratepayers Opposing Water Nonsense have sued the Santa Margarita Water District over its approval of the environmental impact report and the water purchase agreement it entered into with Cadiz, Inc.

In addition, Senator Dianne Feinstein has signaled continuing opposition to the project, which is consistent with the stance she took when Cadiz, Inc. floated a similar water mining operation more than a decade ago. In an October 1 letter to board chairwoman Josie Gonzales, Feinsten reiterated that opposition, urging Gonzales and her board colleagues to deny the project endorsement if the amount of groundwater to be extracted from the aquifers exceeds the natural annual recharge rate of the local desert basins, which was determined by the United States Geological Survey in 2001 to be 5,000 acre feet per year.

Only supervisor Neil Derry, whose Third District includes a portion of the East Mojave, voted against the project.

Project proponents asserted the project represented no harm to the desert and its environment, and they said the county should embrace it because it represented economic development and employment opportunities. Opponents retorted that the jobs to be created would be temporary and that the monopolization of the region’s water by areas outside of the county would inhibit or outright prevent future economic growth and development in the Eastern Mojave.

County supervisors approve Cadiz desert water pumping plan

Ruth Musser-Lopez, a former council member from Needles, speaks during a protest of the groundwater management plan for the Cadiz project, before the San Bernardino County Supervisors meeting, on Monday, October 1, 2012. (KURT MILLER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN
Press-Enterprise

An ambitious private water project that would draw water from deep under the Mojave Desert and pipe it across California was given the go-ahead Monday, Oct. 1, by San Bernardino County supervisors.

Opponents and supporters spoke for five hours during a special hearing on the controversial Cadiz project, which would pump an average of 50,000 acre-feet per year from beneath a remote valley south of the Mojave National Preserve and pipe it to cities across the state.

The vote was 4-1, with Supervisor Neil Derry dissenting.

“My constituents have been very vocal about not taking water out of the desert,” Derry said.

The supervisor said he also opposes the Santa Margarita Water District in Mission Viejo acting as lead agency on the project instead of the county. The Orange County water agency has agreed to buy water from Cadiz Inc., along with Jurupa Community Services District in Riverside County, and five other agencies as far north as San Jose.

Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt cited several benefits for the county, including a hedge against uncertain supplies from Northern California and new jobs in a region that needs them.

Part of the agreement reserves 20 percent of whatever is pumped for the county, plus 25,000 acre-feet, he said.

“How much would it cost us to build a project that could access that much water?” Mitzelfelt asked. “I see a benefit at a very reasonable cost.”

Numerous representatives of the manufacturing industry, pipe layers, surveyors and the Building Industry Association said it would create thousands of jobs and bring water supply reliability that would boost the economy by billions of dollars.

Environmentalists said the pumping would cause a drop in the water table that would dry up springs supporting bighorn sheep and other wildlife, could cause dust storms on nearby dry lake beds that would adversely affect air quality, and overdraw the water table.

The board approved an amended version of a management plan to govern project operations.

The plan includes a water-withdrawal threshold that, if reached, would allow the county to shut down pumping from the Cadiz Valley.

The 80-foot floor was established because the county doubts Cadiz Inc.’s assertion that natural recharge — the rate at which rain and snow replenish the water — is 32,000 acre-feet per year, said Christian Marsh, the county’s special counsel.

A study by the U.S. Geological Survey showed recharge at 5,000 acre-feet per year.

“If the recharge is only 5,000 acre-feet per year and they pump 50,000, they’ll hit the (80-foot) floor within 10 years,” Marsh said.

The threshold eliminates widespread worries about the aquifer’s rate of recharge, he said. The county also will monitor vegetation in the area and watch for sinking land, among other indicators of potential harm, he said.

Many project opponents complained about the threshold.

“By 80 feet, the damage will be done,” said Michael Valdez, a lawyer with the UC Irvine Environmental Law Clinic.

Several speakers alleged campaign donations by Cadiz Inc. had influenced the supervisors’ decisions in favor of the project. From 2007 to June 30, 2012, Cadiz has donated more than $107,000 to supervisors and candidates for the office, according to county records.

Among them: Mitzelfelt received $48,100; Gary Ovitt, $11,745; Josie Gonzales, $8,450; Janice Rutherford, $5,999; and Derry, $5,250.

Supervisors did not respond to calls from the public to address how much money they have received from the company.

This is the second incarnation of the Cadiz project. Since it was first proposed in 1999, Cadiz general counsel Scott Slater said his company has downsized the project, spent $10 million to drill wells and map the area and change the pipeline route.

“The project has made a promise to conserve millions of acre-feet of groundwater without harm to others and the environment and, with its action today, the county will ensure that this promise is fulfilled,” Slater said.

It will be years before the $225 million project is operational because the company must still reach an agreement with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to use its pipelines. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is critical of the project. In addition, it may require a federal environmental review.

Meanwhile, two lawsuits are pending, one by the National Parks Conservation Association and other environmental groups, and the other from Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which runs a brine mining operation at two dry lakes near the 45,000 acres that Cadiz owns.

Protect Mojave Desert water sources

Point of View

Greg McKnight
San Bernardino Sun

The story of California cannot be told without telling the history of water. That has been borne out repeatedly, sometimes with benefit to all, sometimes, as in the Owens Valley, with tragic results. Now, the next chapter of the water saga is being told here in the Mojave Desert.

On Monday, the Board of Supervisors has an opportunity to show how seriously it takes the issue of protecting local water resources by taking the time to carefully study a proposal to mine water from the ancient water aquifers under the Mojave Desert and ship that water, for profit, outside the county.

If water is a precious resource, then it is many times more so in a desert environment. The water below the desert has seeped into the water table over millions of years. This process supports the desert ecosystems and the hardy desert humans who rely on wells to sustain their way of life.

This process also supports Tetra's longstanding business operation that has operated in the desert for almost 100 years. As the water passes through the desert, it collects salt from the soil, which is deposited into dry lakes. We collect salts that are sold to agricultural and industrial users in California. We employ dozens of workers, pay millions in taxes and payroll, which in turn supports local businesses.

Into this environment comes the Cadiz Water Project, a proposal to mine billions of gallons of water from these ancient aquifers and sell it, for profit, to water providers outside the county. Cadiz, which claims they are taking water that would otherwise evaporate, proposes to pump water from far below the surface, and convey that water for distribution outside the county. Ironically, that water will water lawns and golf courses and fill up artificial lakes, and from which it will ... evaporate.

This makes no sense, and is troubling because the process has been rife with concerns that it is biased in favor of Cadiz. That is why it is so important that our Board of Supervisors slow this process down, and be certain that pumping so much water from beneath the desert will not do irreparable harm to our community.

What are some of the concerns?

1. A small Orange County water district that will buy the water led the environmental review of the proposal. This is a conflict of interest because this district gets the benefit of the water, but suffers none of the harm.

2. Previous studies from objective scientists of the National Park Service and the U.S. Geological Service concluded annual recharge of the aquifer was 3,000-15,000 acre-feet per year. Cadiz claims in a new study paid for by them, that the annual recharge is 32,000 acre-feet, up to 10 times more than previous studies. This study needs to be much more closely scrutinized.

3. Even if you accept Cadiz's study, the project will mine 50,000 to 75,000 acre-feet of water each year. So even under their recharge assumption, they would take 2 times more water than is recharged naturally. Under the Park Service and USGS numbers, the "overdraft" of water is much worse.

4. The county is reviewing a complex document called a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan (GMMMP). This document was only made public on Thursday, and now the Supervisors propose to approve this document on Monday. The public has had no time to review this document.

5. This water extraction could impact military bases in the region, and make them more of a threat for future rounds of base closures.

6. Mankind does not know everything about how aquifers store water and how fragile these may be; many scientists believe that if you extract water too fast from natural underground storage, you can damage the aquifer before you can notice the damage. That means monitoring alone, which is the key component of the GMMMP, is not enough.

With all the possibility of great harm to the county if the Cadiz study is wrong and the U.S. Geologic Service is right, the proper course for the Board of Supervisors is to act carefully. There is no reason to rush through approval of the Cadiz project. That water has sat under the desert for millions of years, and we need not decide Monday if we have to mine it and sell it to Orange County. We can take more time, conduct more studies, and make sure San Bernardino County does not become the next tragic tale in California's water history.

Greg McKnight is director of manufacturing for TETRA Technologies Chemicals Group, headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.

Environmental groups sue over Cadiz water project

Cadiz Inc. has proposed pumping 16 billion gallons of water per year from beneath land it owns and beyond in the Mojave Desert.

BY JANET ZIMMERMAN STAFF WRITER
Press-Enterprise

Four environmental groups filed a lawsuit Friday, Aug. 31, against San Bernardino County and an Orange County water district to challenge a controversial groundwater mining project in the Mojave Desert.

The crux of the lawsuit is the question of which agency should serve as lead on the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, which would pump 16 billion gallons of groundwater per year from ancient aquifers.

The Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, Sierra Club San Gorgonio chapter and the San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society contend the county should have led the environmental review of the project, not the Santa Margarita Water District in Mission Viejo, which has signed on as a future buyer of the water from Cadiz Inc.

The water district is named in the suit for approving the environmental impact report on the project on July 31. The county has 90 days from that date to approve or reject the environmental impact report, and can issue or deny a permit for the project.

The project “is in San Bernardino County, that’s where all the impacts are going to be; they should be in charge, not some Orange County water agency,” said Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity.

San Bernardino County spokesman David Wert said the county has no authority over whether it is the lead agency.

“Santa Margarita claimed lead status before the county had a chance to,” he said. “The county can’t just switch that.”

County lawyers said that historically, once an agency claims lead status, the state doesn’t overturn it, Wert said. The county didn’t challenge the status because if defeated, it would have been locked out of the process, he said.

“This way, at least we have a seat at the table,” Wert said.

Adam Lazar, a staff attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, disagreed.
The California Environmental Quality Act says that such a dispute would be submitted to the state Office of Planning and Research for a decision. If defeated, the county would still be the responsible agency, which can give a thumbs-up or down to the environmental impact report, Lazar said.

The groups want the report voided and redone by the county, and they want the county named lead agency.

The project would extract groundwater from an open valley beneath 45,000 acres that Cadiz Inc. owns south of the Marble Mountains, 40 miles east of Twentynine Palms. The area lies between the Mojave National Preserve and Joshua Tree National Park in eastern San Bernardino County.

The $225 million project would provide water for about 400,000 people served by six water districts throughout California, including Jurupa Community Services District in Riverside County.

Critics say the pumping would cause a drop in the water table that would dry up springs supporting bighorn sheep and other wildlife. They also have raised concerns that it could cause dust storms on nearby dry lake beds, adversely affect air quality, overdraw the water table and alter the flow of groundwater beneath the Mojave Preserve over the 50-year life of the project.

Hydrologists from the U.S. Geological Survey and elsewhere say Cadiz’s estimates of natural recharge to the aquifer are overstated.

This is the second lawsuit challenging the project. Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which operates a brine mining operation at two dry lakes near Cadiz’s property, also is contesting Santa Margarita as the lead agency.

Both lawsuits center on the county’s groundwater management ordinance, designed to protect resources in the desert. The ordinance was passed in 2002, after an earlier version of the Cadiz project was proposed. Metropolitan Water District was a partner on that earlier version but abandoned it amid environmentalists' opposition and cost concerns.

Lazar, the attorney for the environmentalists, said the county violated the ordinance by not setting an acceptable rate of decline for the aquifer or danger levels that would trigger alerts of harm, before the environmental impact report was approved.

Is this Mojave water project worth the risk?

A private company's plan to tap a desert aquifer needs more study before going forward.

Editorial
Los Angeles Times

The search for reliable water supplies for Southern California has been going on for as long as Americans have lived here, and continues today. State officials are examining a proposal to draw water from the Sacramento River and ship it to this part of California, bypassing the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and its shaky levees. Los Angeles officials are also trying to balance the water needs of the city against their obligations to hold down dust in the Owens Valley, which has long supplied much of Los Angeles' water and whose brackish lake dried up in the process. The debates over water often are complicated and weighted by competing and compelling interests.

But all water projects are not the same, and one that deserves special scrutiny is a recent proposal to draw thousands of acre-feet of water out of an aquifer that sits beneath the Mojave Desert and send it to users throughout the region, especially the Santa Margarita Water District, which supplies part of Orange County. The water district last week gave the project a boost by approving its environmental impact report.

That's the latest step in a long march. The project has been pursued for more than a decade by Keith Brackpool, an influential Southern California businessman (Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa once worked for Brackpool, who also served as a key water advisor to Gov. Gray Davis). If approved, it would clear the way for Brackpool and his company, Cadiz Inc., to sell enough water every year to serve 100,000 homes. Cadiz could make $1 billion to $2 billion over the 50-year span of the deal.

Some may flinch at the philosophical implications of a private investor selling water that accumulated for centuries beneath his land to public agencies for his own profit. But for better or worse, that bridge was long ago crossed. The farmers of the Owens Valley, for instance, sold their water rights to representatives of Los Angeles in the early 20th century, and that water continues to provide this city with much of its supply.

What makes the Cadiz project unique are two factors: its size and its location. Selling 50,000 to 75,000 acre-feet of water a year, as the company proposes to do, is an extraordinary exchange of water. It would require the construction of a 43-mile pipeline, and it would pump more water out of the ground than any previous private project in California. More important, the water would be drawn from the ancient aquifer that has undergirded the Mojave Desert from time immemorial. No one knows precisely how quickly that aquifer replenishes. If the Cadiz project draws water faster than rain and snow can refill it, the aquifer will dry up — and the desert will die.

Will that happen? Cadiz's experts say no, that the aquifer can sustain the anticipated withdrawals and replenish annually. But other experts take a far more conservative view of how much water can safely be drawn from the aquifer. The gap between Cadiz's estimates of the replenishment rate and those of the government is staggering and of great consequence: The Cadiz estimates are three to 16 times higher than those of the U.S. Geological Survey and other experts, according to the National Park Service. If the USGS is right and Cadiz is wrong, the project would rapidly destroy the aquifer.

Recognizing the potentially grave implications for the Mojave, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wrote this year to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to urge his department to perform an assessment of the project's likely impact on the ecology of the region. That's a prudent proposal. Salazar should heed it.

Yes, federal intervention could slow this deal, which Rancho Santa Margarita and Cadiz understandably are eager to get underway. But the range of the estimates in play here — and the clear interest that Cadiz and Rancho Santa Margarita have in accepting best-case scenarios — suggest that an objective agency with a broader perspective should conduct its own analysis.

It may be that Cadiz's estimates will stand up to scrutiny; if so, this deal could provide precious water to areas that need it. Before it's allowed to go forward, however, neutral experts need to give it their best appraisal.

Former Mayor Says There's "Nothing" Out in the Desert

Commentary by Steve Brown
The Sun Runner

"You've all been out there, there's nothing out there in that desert anyway." Garry Thompson, Cadiz Water Project supporter, public comment at SMWD Engineering Committee meeting July 13, 2012.

There's nothing out there?

Oh really.

If the folks behind the Cadiz water mining operation (known euphemistically as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery & Storage Project as it siphons off the desert's water to soak the lawns of Orange County) wanted to prove their ignorance of the desert region without a doubt, they could not have found a better person to demonstrate that ignorance than former Rancho Santa Margarita mayor, Garry Thompson.

Thompson proves that the "minds" behind the Cadiz water mining project don't know much about the desert, the place where they're planning on getting their water.

What that means is their ignorance, which is evidently acceptable to them, could lead to disasterous results for the desert.

According to Thompson, there's nothing out here in the desert. Just the fact that he would make that statement as a supporter of the Cadiz water mining project is an indicator of the Orange County mindset that whatever happens to the desert as a result of their project doesn't matter.

There's nothing here, ergo there can be no harm done to nothing.

Nothing, however, could be further from the truth.

The "science" used in their studies has been challenged in various aspects, by numerous groups, while the Cadiz backers charge that mysterious forces in Sacramento are all that oppose their project, a tawdry ploy to divert attention from the fact that their project could lead to irreperable harm to desert wildlife, including plant life, and that by the time monitoring provided conclusive evidence of the harm, the damage would be done.

The desert is a vibrant and diverse set of ecosystems, a beautiful but delicate land, where life has learned to thrive with limited resources. The downside of that is when you extract some of those limited resources, you remove a portion of those resources that elsewhere may not lead to extreme and disasterous consequences, but here could lead to the destruction of entire populations of effected species.

Dry up the seeps and springs that desert bighorn sheep rely upon during the summer months, for instance, and by the time your monitoring confirms that there are no more seeps and springs during the summer, the bighorn will have all died off.

That may not bother Cadiz backers like Thompson very much as they water their green lawns with pristine desert water, but it sure as hell bothers me and many of us who know and value what there really is in this desert.

The Sun Runner Magazine officially opposes the Cadiz water mining project because of the likely devastating environmental consequences for the nearby Mojave Desert wildlands, and the Mojave National Preserve. The blatantly ignorant comments of folks like Thompson do nothing to further our confidence in the assertions of the organizations behind the Cadiz water mining project that there will be no environmental harm done to the desert by the project.

They clearly don't know about, or care about the desert, so therefore, it is up to those of us in the desert, and those who do care about the desert, to stand up for our home.

Perhaps the former mayor is confused. Maybe there's nothing in his head - a desolate landscape devoid of life.

SB County History Full Of Outside Efforts To Commandeer Desert’s Water

By Mark Gutglueck
San Bernardino Sentinel

The Cadiz Water Project is not the first effort by outside business entities to lay claim to San Bernardino County’s water resources and utilize them elsewhere in Southern California.

For nearly 120 years, speculators have sought to capture local water rights and profiteer by selling the water to local users or diverting it elsewhere within or outside of the county. Most of those efforts pertain to water which originates in the San Bernardino Mountains and front page flows northward into the Mojave River or southward into the Santa Ana River.

Between October and December of 1892, a group of investors from Minneapolis and St. Paul raised $1.5 million and before the close of the year used a portion of that money to purchase from the Hesperia Land and Water Company an option on the water rights and dam site at Victor Narrows. Working in conjunction with Dr. Joseph Jarvis from Riverside, James E. Mack of Bloomington as well as A. H. Koebig and O.J. Perkins of Los Angeles, the group was purposed to buy outright or otherwise purchase options on property that carried with it the existing water claims around the Mojave River and a suitable site for a 171-foot high and from 75-foot-to-150-foot-wide dam and reservoir above the Upper Mojave Narrows that would house enough water to irrigate 250,000 acres in the High Desert.

When the Panic of ‘93 hit later that year, the resolve to continue the effort dissolved. A handful of the participants reformed as another corporation headquartered in Springfield, Illinois led by J. C. Dickson of Sierra Madre and the previously referenced James E. Mack, still intent upon a venture to harness the Mojave River. That effort, too, foundered. But in 1895, J. W. Wilson, together with O. O. Howard, formed a corporation, the Columbia Colonization Company of Chicago, and bought the Victor reservoir project for a promissory note of $80,000. Later that year, Howard dropped out of the venture, to be replaced by H. P. Sweet. The Columbia Colonization Company entered into agreements with homesteaders of 320-acre ranges provided for in the Desert Land Act to permanently provide those homesteaders with water in exchange for 280 of their claimed acres. The company then sought to sell land thus obtained to investors or buyers interested in occupying it. Questions about the legality of the company’s sales of land to which the government still held title emerged, resulting in a federal district court order enjoining the Columbia Colonization Company from marketing unpatented government land or their bonds outside of California. The company subsequently faltered when it failed to deliver on its promissory note to the Springfield, Illinois company, which then attempted to reassert its water rights and possession of the dam site.

That scheme was superseded by one pursued by another group of speculators, the Appleton Land and Water Company of Los Angeles, led by P. D. Hatch. Hatch’s plan was to construct a dam much closer to the ultimate source of the water, more than 11 miles above the Victor reservoir, to not only control the flow of the Mojave River itself but to reroute a major portion of the water flow coming northward down the slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains in flumes and aqueducts eastward on the other side of Hesperia.

At that time, both wells and the Mojave River were being tapped by a handful of farmers who planted non-citrus orchards in what would eventually become known as Apple Valley.

In the 1890s, hundreds of acres in Hesperia had been converted to vineyards, which yielded fruit utilized as much for raisins as wine.

Simultaneously, up in the San Bernardino Mountains, the Arrowhead Reservoir Company had formed. That company’s goal was in no small part crosswise of what were the intentions of the Appleton Land and Water Company and other speculators in the desert, in that it had designs to dam up the water at a spot in the mountains and then divert the water through a tunnel to be dug and blasted out through the mountains southward to irrigate San Bernardino, Highland, Redlands, Colton and other growing communities well removed from the Victor Valley.

These competing designs and claims on the Mojave River’s water intensified in the late 1890s.

In 1899, Gifford Pinchot, head of the U.S. Division of Forestry, which would later become the United States Forest Service, personally came through the Victor Valley during a tour of California and its vast undeveloped wildlands. Upon his return to Washington, he commissioned a comprehensive survey of the Mojave River watershed. After President William McKinley was succeeded by the more conservation-minded Theodore Roosevelt, the Newlands Reclamation Act, authored by congressman Francis G. Newlands of Nevada, was passed by Congress in 1902, funding irrigation projects for the arid lands of the American West.

The act’s passage set off a second round of even more intensive and bitter legal battles between the Arrowhead Reservoir Company and nearly all of the water interests along the Mojave River. The Hesperia Land and Water Company, led by its then-president, W. A. Field, in both legal and bureaucratic filings maintained that the Arrowhead Reservoir Company’s proposed project would deplete, obstruct or eradicate the natural flow of water into the Mojave River.

Simultaneously, a group of small stakes West Coast investors who were backed by a syndicate of larger stakeholders from the East Coast assembled and headed by James Westwater of Ohio, employed Arthur E. Poole of Los Angeles, whose brother Charles was an engineer working on the city of Los Angeles’ Owens River Aqueduct, to purchase options on the properties and ranches lying along the lower Mojave River. By these purchases, Poole secured the lion’s share of water rights along the Mojave River through the Victor Valley, including the property that had been intended as dam and reservoir sites in the area. In 1904, the Arrowhead Reservoir Company commenced construction of a dam in the mountains.

In early 1906, Poole and Westwater announced they intended to initiate by July 1906 the construction of a dam in the Victor Valley along the Mojave River that would be used for both irrigation and power generation. By that summer, Westwater’s East Coast co-investors were expressing doubts about any large projects in California in the wake of the San Francisco Earthquake. As Westwater’s access to capital dried up and Poole failed to make good on promissory notes he had provided to secure property along the river, the duo ultimately were unable to retain control of any of the river bank property or the attendant water rights.

Over the next two-and-a-half years, The Arrowhead Reservoir Company continued to assert its Mojave River Basin water claims, making renewals on them every two months. But during the same time frame, Field and his Hesperia Land and Water Company claimed to have indisputable possession or control over 33,000 acres bordering the river. Field marshaled his company’s filing for one million miner’s inches (equal to 1.5 million cubic feet of water per minute) on both forks of the Mojave, which predated the Arrowhead Reservoir Company’s competing claims by more than two years, to assert that his company’s rights to the disputed water eclipsed the rights Arrowhead adduced. The Hesperia Land and Water Company had consistently utilized 5,000 inches of water from the East Fork every year for two decades, establishing, Field maintained, an inviolable right that would legally preclude the Arrowhead Reservoir Company or any other entity from diverting the Mojave River’s water away from the desert.

In 1909, a slew of other riparian owners along the Mojave filed suits against the Arrowhead Reservoir Company to prevent the diversion of the San Bernardino Mountain water away from the Mojave River Basin. While these suits were pending, the California Supreme Court entered a judgment in a case in the San Joaquin Valley involving a similar proposed rechanneling of water from its natural drainage area which barred such diversions where they would negatively impact existing agricultural operations.

Thereafter, the company’s subsidiary, the Arrowhead Lake Company, pursued transforming the once-contemplated reservoir site into a resort, completing that project, which had only minimal impact on the flow of water northward into the Mojave Desert, in 1922.

In October 1913, a San Francisco corporation, of which J. R. Wilbur was president, Ray K. Barrows vice president and A. L. Dahl secretary and treasurer, filed an application at the San Francisco office of the U.S. Forestry Service for a right-of-way to dig a tunnel twenty miles long through a portion of the San Bernardino Mountains to divert flood waters from the Mojave River to provide power and irrigation to citrus orchards in and around the cities of San Bernardino, Redlands, Riverside and that vicinity, where water would be used for citrus groves. One of the corporation’s board members was A. E. Boynton, at that time the speaker pro tem of the California State Senate. Wilbur’s corporation proposed locating a reservoir for the water at Victorville and a powerhouse to be driven by the gravity-fed water in San Bernardino.

Opposition to that undertaking involving the Victor Chamber of Commerce and local agricultural interests formed. The Victor Chamber of Commerce reclamation committee, led by its chairman, John D. Reavis, moved, according to a report in the Victor News-Herald, “to retain the most competent water attorney and engineer available” and immediately filed a protest with the government against the granting of a permit for right-of-way for a tunnel to divert water from the Victor Valley’s watershed to the San Bernardino Valley “on the grounds that it is contrary to law.” The tunnel project was not undertaken.

In 1921, the city of Pasadena filed with the California Water Commission to divert Mojave River water to Los Angeles County, spurring the Mojave River Irrigation District to take action to ensure that water rights along the river be secured by interests which would not allow the water to be appropriated by irrigation or municipal uses outside the local area. In the spring of 1922, the Mojave River Irrigation District asked a judge to set for trial the district’s request for condemnation of the Arrowhead Reservoir & Power Company’s land holdings along the Mojave River, which had gone unused since 1909, when the Arrowhead Reservoir & Power Company had abandoned its plans to divert a large portion of Mojave River water southward. Throughout late 1921 and early 1922, the Mojave Irrigation District along with a collection of Victor Valley residents lobbied San Bernardino County officials to use the authority of the county to oppose the city of Pasadena’s effort. In June 1922, interests in San Bernardino, in apparent reaction to Pasadena’s effort to secure water from the Mojave River, undertook an effort to divert an annual flow of 2,000 inches of water from Lake Arrowhead and an additional 4,000 inches from Deep Creek to San Bernardino, Redlands, Colton, Rialto and other cities south of the Cajon Pass.

In November 1926, a dispute within the Victor Valley over the use and monopolization of Mojave River water erupted when land owners along the lower Mojave River, objecting to the proposed use of river water in the Apple Valley region, filed suit to test the validity of the state water commission’s granting of a permit to the Mojave Irrigation District to impound the headwaters of the Mojave and use that supply in Apple Valley for agricultural purposes. The suit alleged the use of the water in Apple Valley would cause a shortage in the lower region.

In August 1927, sixteen cities located in Riverside, Orange, Los Angles and lower San Bernardino counties organized to form a metropolitan water district to undertake a $150,000,000 project to bring water to thirsty Southern California from the Colorado River. The effort represented a landmark in terms of lessening, though not eliminating, the threat that entities outside of the Victor Valley would divert Mojave River water away from the High Desert.

In December 1930, residents of the Victor Valley were shocked to learn that Ralph E. Swing, the attorney who was hired to represent the county before the state water commission to resist the city of Pasadena’s attempts to appropriate water rights along the Mojave River in 1921 and who was now a state senator, was assisting the city of San Bernardino in its filing to obtain 1,000 inches of surplus water in the Mojave river basin and transport it through the mountains in a three-mile tunnel and an aqueduct as part of a $3 million project to deliver the water to San Bernardino, Riverside, Rialto and Redlands to provide irrigation for citrus groves. The proposal also entailed plans to utilize the water to generate electrical power at a powerhouse in Devil Canyon as well as a 160- foot high dam near the junction of the east and west fork of the Mojave River to impound water at an elevation of 3,800 feet. The Victor Valley Chamber of Commerce immediately went on record against the project proposal.

Less than two weeks later the chamber hastily formed a committee composed of E. E. Kiggins of Oro Grande, L. G. Merritt of Helendale, T. J. Thomas of Apple Valley, Frank Hubbard and C. M. Moon of Victorville with Judge J. P. Hoffman elected as temporary chairman, to formulate some method of organization which would guard against encroachments on Mojave River water.

In February 1931, the Mojave River Irrigation District filed with the California Department of Water Resources to divert 85,000 acre feet per annum from Deep Creek and the West Fork tributary to the Mojave River for irrigation and domestic purposes onto 26,878 acres. This application was made as part of an effort to protect the Mojave River basin and forestall any diversion to the Mojave River water south of the mountains by establishing rights of priority over any applications which were to follow, subject to existing rights. The same month, 23 ranchers, well owners, riparian rights holders and other citizens formed the Mojave River Valley Protective Association with Judge J.P. Hoffman as chairman to safeguard the waters of the Mojave River from diversion. The association engaged attorneys Grant Holcomb and Byron Waters to protect its members’ water rights.

In June 1931 the Mojave River Valley Protective Association lodged a petition to the county board of supervisors for an election for the formation of a county water district, resulting in just such an election on August 21, at which the creation of a local water district passed by a vote of 183 to 41.

On August 4, 1932, the state filed a suit to cancel the rights of the Arrowhead Lake Company granted 18 years previously. According to the action, the rights in question pertained to the proposed construction of a 150-foot dam on the Mojave River for irrigating the 35,000 acres of land near Victorville. The state asserted in its suit that the Arrowhead Company failed to carry out provisions of the agreement on which the rights were granted, specifically undertaking the $3.25 million dam and reservoir construction project.

In December 1933 the directors of the Orange County Water District in Tustin advanced a $6 million-to-$10 million plan to purchase land along the Mojave River and develop a water project near Victorville and divert water to the Santa Ana River in Orange County.

While the Orange County water officials alleged in excess of 100,000 acre feet of water from the Mojave River was available annually and that only 6,000 acres in the Victor Valley were being irrigated with the available water, water owners and the communities in the Mojave Basin held a different viewpoint regarding the surplus water of the Mojave River and its availability for any use on the south side of the mountains. On Sunday, January 7, 1934, the Mojave Basin Protective Association authorized the expediting of conservation measures on the Mojave River, including the construction of dams at several points, as part of an effort to utilize the water locally and stave off the attempts of outside interests to seize a portion of the river’s water.

In July 1934, as the High Desert was gripped by a drought and Mojave Valley farmers and stockmen were applying through the county to the federal government for drought relief funding, Orange County water interests renewed their effort, which had lain dormant for several months, to divert to their county a portion of the Mojave River’s flow. At a meeting in Anaheim held under the auspices of the Orange County Chamber of Commerce, a resolution seeking an engineering survey to determine the cost of such a venture and the amount of water it might yield was passed.

In December 1934, before the interests in Orange and Riverside counties could themselves appropriate Mojave River water, the city of Los Angeles filed for 400,000 cubic feet of water from Seeley Creek, a tributary of the West Fork of the Mojave. Los Angeles’ stated intention for the water was to use it for domestic purposes at the “city playground at Camp Seeley,” owned by the city of Los Angeles. By establishing water usage there, the city of Los Angeles could at some indefinite future date discontinue its local utilization of the water and then divert a like amount to Los Angeles.

On January 12 1935 the Mojave Basin Protective Association met at the office of A. S. Amaral to ready protests of the Los Angeles filing and the anticipated filing by the Riverside, Orange and lower San Bernardino county interests.
On February 16, 1935 a meeting of the Mojave River Basin Protective Association was held in Helendale and an effort was initiated to organize all of the territory along the Mojave River from Yermo to the mountains into a county water district, incorporating the communities of Barstow, Helendale, Oro Grande, Victorville and Hesperia.

On June 12, 1935, the California state assembly, at the importuning of Assemblyman Gordon Corwin, amended legislation related to the Orange County Water District, Senate Bill 112, to prevent Mojave River basin water from being diverted to the headwaters of the Santa Ana River for use in Orange County. As originally drafted and passed by the state senate, Senate Bill 112 granted the Orange County Water District the power of eminent domain in areas beyond its jurisdiction, permitting that entity to condemn lands and water rights along the Mojave River. Though the measure passed the senate, it was amended and eventually defeated in the assembly.

In September 1935, a report by irrigation engineer Harry F. Blaney and irrigation economist Paul A. Ewing made at the request of the Riverside Water Company and other water organizations in Orange and Riverside counties entitled Utilization of the Waters of the Mojave River became public. Although the Orange County and Riverside County interests had hoped the report would serve them in an effort to appropriate a portion of the High Desert’s water, Blaney and Ewing made findings that any substantial diversion of water from the Mojave River at its headwaters would produce a small deficiency between the forks and Victorville, some deficiency between Victorville and Bastow and very likely a substantial deficiency below Barstow. According to the report, “Any diversion of Mojave River water outside its watershed should be made only after care is taken of the normal agricultural, domestic and industrial needs (including those of railroads) of the valley itself. The valley’s rights should stand in the preferred position, and outside claimants should be satisfied with what is left. Hence, provision should be made to protect the present water needs of the valley before the diversion is begun in any year.”

In the first week of October 1935, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and San Bernardino County District Attorney James L. King filed upon all the surplus water of the Mojave River with the proviso that the filing would within sixty days be turned over to a water district to be formed within the Mojave River Basin. The action was taken in response to reports that water interests in Riverside and Orange counties were planning to file on a portion of the Mojave River’s water for diversion into the Santa Ana River.

On October 9, 1935 a meeting of Orange and Riverside county’s governmental officials and public and private water interests was held in Riverside. San Bernardino County First District Supervisor Arthur Doran and district attorney James L. King attended the meeting to represent San Bernardino County. Also present were San Bernardino mayor C. T. Johnson and a number of water users from the Mojave basin. Discussion at the meeting centered around a report by federal engineers regarding the amount of water that might be diverted from the Mojave River. After the San Bernardino County contingent went on record as being opposed to any diversion of Mojave River water to Riverside or Orange counties, the other attendees of the meeting protested the San Bernardino County delegation’s continued participation, and Doran and King left the confab.

On January 21, 1936 voters within the boundaries of the proposed 60,000-acre Mojave River County Water District between Victorville and Barstow ratified its creation 149 to 28.

In 2001, Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. proposed a project calling for pumping water from the Colorado River during wet years, storing it in an underground aquifer beneath the Cadiz Valley in the Eastern Mojave, and selling as much as 60,000 acre-feet of the native groundwater and Colorado River water mix to the Metropolitan Water District (MWD) in Los Angeles during dry years. That proposal was ultimately rejected by the Metropolitan Water District’s board of directors after conservationists raised concerns over possible environmental damage.

In 2009, the city of Riverside proposed laying claim to a considerable amount of Santa Ana River water at the south end of San Bernardino County through an undertaking to be known as the Riverside North Aquifer Storage and Recovery Project.

Through its public utilities division, Riverside has plans to construct a 700-foot wide dam extending across the Santa Ana River north of the Riverside County Line on 30 acres of unincorporated San Bernardino County land owned by the city of Riverside just beyond the outskirts of Colton to capture the river’s flow and provide a ready supply of millions of gallons of water that originates in the San Bernardino Mountains to be conveyed by aqueducts or pipes to areas of the city of Riverside’s choosing for use in recharging groundwater basins.

The part concrete, part vulcanized rubber dam, has been designed to be retracted, i.e., deflated, at will to allow the river to continue its southward flow.

Plans are that the $15 million project’s cost would be borne entirely by the city of Riverside. The undertaking would be of primary benefit to the Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, which is to be the recipient of over 80 percent of the water to be collected by the dam. The city of Riverside intends to sell some of the water to the city of Colton and the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District. The project has not yet proceeded to completion and Riverside is yet working on the environmental impact report for the project, according to Kevin Milligan, the chief financial officer and interim chief assistant general manager of Riverside’s utility division.

County Faces Lawsuit Over Desert Water Project Approval

San Bernardino Sentinel

San Bernardino, CA -- A salt mining company in the Cadiz Valley has lodged a lawsuit against the county of San Bernardino over the proposed Cadiz Water Project, maintaining a memorandum of understanding the county entered into with the project’s proponents bypasses crucial components of the environmental certification process.

Referred to by its proponents as the Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, the undertaking is an $878 million proposal by Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. to sink 34 wells into the desert and construct a 44-mile pipeline along a railroad right-of-way until it meets up with the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas. That system will be used to draw an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Cadiz Aquifer for use by the Santa Margarita Water District, the second largest water agency in Orange County; the Three Valleys Water District, which provides water to the Pomona Valley, Walnut Valley, and Eastern San Gabriel Valley; the Golden State Water Company, which serves several communities in Southern California, including Claremont; Suburban Water Systems, which serves Covina, West Covina and La Mirada; and the Jurupa Community Services District, which serves Mira Loma in Riverside County.

Cadiz has arranged for the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley and will be the recipient of the lion’s share of the water to be obtained under the plan, to serve as the lead agency in the environmental certification of the project. Reportedly, county officials considered petitioning the California Office of Planning and Research to regain oversight of the project but rejected that option and on May 1 entered into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, a corporate entity created by and wholly owned by Cadiz, Inc., which ceded to the Santa Margarita Water District lead agency status for the consideration of the project and its environmental review.

On May 25, the law firm of Rutan & Tucker filed on behalf of Tetra Technologies a petition for a writ of mandate and a complaint for injunctive relief against the county of San Bernardino and its board of supervisors that named Cadiz, Inc., the Santa Margarita Water District and the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company as real parties in interest.
The Cadiz Valley lies just south of the Marble Mountains and northeast of the Sheep Hole Mountains near the National Trails Highway. Cadiz is home to a former railroad stop along the Santa Fe line, 17 miles east of Amboy and 70 miles from Needles.

Tetra's mining operations in the Cadiz Valley consist of the use of surface collection pits into which underground brines percolate as well as the pumping of underground brines into evaporation ponds.

According to Rutan & Tucker, “By ceding lead agency status to the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD), the county violated its Desert Groundwater Management Ordinance and turned the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) on its head. The ordinance provides that an applicant who wishes to construct a groundwater well in the desert area must either get a permit from the county, after complying with CEQA, or be "excluded" from the ordinance. Rather than comply with the California Environmental Quality Act and seek permits from the county to construct its wells, Cadiz and SMWD seek to exclude themselves from the ordinance. The ordinance expressly contemplates that an applicant seeking to exclude itself from the ordinance must follow a particular order: First, a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan must be adopted which adheres to the ordinance's ‘groundwater safe yield’ limitations. Thereafter, the applicant must execute a memorandum of understanding or other binding agreement with the county which, among other things, ensures that the measures identified in the county approved groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan are fully implemented and enforced. By approving the memorandum of understanding before the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan was prepared and approved, the county flipped this prescribed order.”

The writ continues, “The Santa Margarita Water District and Cadiz, Inc. were complicit in this inversion of the sequence prescribed in the ordinance, which inversion allowed the county and SMWD to evade meaningful compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act. Specifically, the Santa Margarita Water District has proposed to construct up to 35 wells on Cadiz's land and to pump a massive amount of groundwater from the underlying aquifer. Whereas Cadiz had been using only approximately 1,500 acre feet per year for its agricultural operations in recent years, the Cadiz Project proposes to pump 50 times that amount (75,000 acre feet per year) for over 33 years or 33.3 times that amount (50,000 acre feet per year) for 50 years.”

Furthermore, according to the writ, “Instead of applying to the county for a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan to exclude itself from the ordinance, a scenario under which the county would have been the lead agency in processing an environmental impact report for the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan, the Santa Margarita Water District usurped the role of lead agency and went forward with the preparation of its own environmental impact report without procuring either a permit or a groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan from the county. In preparing its environmental impact report, however, the Santa Margarita Water District engaged in sleight of hand. It attached a ‘Groundwater Management, Monitoring, and Mitigation Plan’ as an appendix to its draft environmental impact report, and made that document the linchpin of the entire environmental analysis, as if the groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan had already been approved by the county.

Indeed, this ‘phantom groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan’ was even dated (November 29, 2011), suggesting it had been approved then, and was referred to throughout the draft environmental impact report as having already been developed, even though the document had never been approved by the county or subjected to environmental review of any kind. Specifically, the Santa Margarita Water District’s draft environmental impact report relied on the phantom 2011 Groundwater Management, Monitoring and Mitigation Plan for certain project design features and mitigation measures even though the 2011 Groundwater Management Monitoring and Mitigation Plan had never been adopted by the county. Thus, the draft environmental impact report’s conclusion that those project design features and mitigation measures would reduce the project's hydrology impacts to ‘less than significant’ is specious, as an environmental impact report cannot base such a conclusion on an unenforceable, unadopted document within the jurisdiction of another public agency. In short, the entire California Environmental Quality Act process was reduced to a sham exercise that significantly misled the public.”

According to the writ, “By forcing the county into the role of a mere responsible agency, the Santa Margarita Water District also has circumscribed the discretionary power of the county, and by accepting that role, the county has shirked its responsibilities under the California Environmental Quality Act.”

According to Rutan & Tucker, “the Cadiz Project would result in overdraft, and thus exceed the ‘safe yield’ of affected aquifers … because the project proposes to extract an average of 50,000 acre feet per year of groundwater for 50 years (and up to 75,000 acre feet per year for over 33 years), while the maximum assumed recharge is only 32,000 acre feet per year.”

And, according to the writ, the county in drafting the memorandum of understanding cut Cadiz, Inc. an unlawful break by altering the time standard for considering a state of overdraft from gauging whether more water is extracted in a given year than is replenished by that year’s rainfall to considering the average of this difference over a period of ten years, such that a determination of whether such an overdraft exists cannot be made for a decade after the project is initiated.

“The identification, evaluation, and mitigation of potentially significant effects of the project have been unlawfully deferred to a future date, without specific performance standards that must be met and without assurance that any potential mitigation measures will be effective or enforceable,” the writ states. “Moreover, by approving the memorandum of understanding, which contractually binds the county to various obligations, including the preparation of the real groundwater management, monitoring and mitigation plan, the county took another step in the process of approving the Cadiz Project, giving impetus to the project without the benefit of environmental evaluation or meaningful public input.”

David Wert, the official spokesman for the county said, “The county doesn’t have any response to the writ of mandate at this point and will reserve any comment until it has the opportunity to make a response in court. I can tell you the county disagrees with the contention made by the plaintiffs that the county violated the county’s ordinance and CEQA and will be prepared to argue those points.”

Cadiz, Inc. spokesperson Courtney Degener offered her company’s reaction to Tetra Technologies’ legal filing.

“Cadiz, Inc. is developing a sustainable project on its property that will safely capture groundwater that is lost to evaporation and provide a new municipal water supply in Southern California,” Degener said. “Project deliveries of approximately 50,000 acre-feet per year would consist of natural recharge and temporary surplus and not result in overdraft. For many years, Tetra Technologies, an oil and gas enterprise, has operated a salt mining operation at the nearby Cadiz and Bristol Dry Lakes at the low point of the surrounding watershed. This operation removes the surface crust of the dry lakes to expose and evaporate saline water below so that the residual salts can be mined and sold. This process demonstrates that substantial quantities of hyper-saline groundwater exist beneath the dry lakes and underscores the goal of the project to prevent the degradation of fresh water. Tetra’s operations would continue throughout the life of the project and, under the proposed management plan, mitigation measures will be enforced to ensure there are no adverse impacts to third parties, including Tetra.

“We believe,” Degener continued, “this lawsuit has no merit but cannot comment any further on the specifics of this pending litigation.”

County Okays Memorandum Of Understanding For Desert Water Project

by Venturi
San Bernardino Sentinel

The proposed Cadiz Water Project passed a significant milestone this week when the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors approved a memorandum of understanding outlining a review process for the plan to extract massive quantities of water from beneath the eastern Mojave Desert.

The so-called Cadiz Valley Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project is a $536.25 million proposal by Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. to sink 34 wells into the desert and construct a 44-mile pipeline along a railroad right-of-way until it meets up with the aqueduct that carries Colorado River water to the Los Angeles and Orange County metropolitan areas. That system will be used to draw an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water from the Cadiz Aquifer for use by the Santa Margarita Water District, the second largest water agency in Orange County; the Three Valleys Water District, which provides water to the Pomona Valley, Walnut Valley, and Eastern San Gabriel Valley; the Golden State Water Company, which serves several communities in Southern California, including Claremont; Suburban Water Systems, which serves Covina, West Covina and La Mirada; and the Jurupa Community Services District, which serves Mira Loma in Riverside County.

The Cadiz Valley lies just south of the Marble Mountains and northeast of the Sheep Hole Mountains near the National Trails Highway. Cadiz is home to a former railroad stop along the Santa Fe line, 17 miles east of Amboy and 70 miles from Needles. Cadiz, Inc. owns or has options on 45,000 acres in and around the Cadiz Valley, 9,600 acres of which is zoned for agricultural use. That company operates an organic table grape, citrus, melon, pepper, squash, asparagus and bean growing farm on 500 acres in Cadiz, utilizing roughly 1,965 acre-feet of water per year to sustain that operation.

Cadiz has made a disputed claim to the water rights beneath 34,000 acres it has tied up in the area, and its plan calls for tapping that water supply, which is connected to other neighboring aquifers beneath land not controlled by Cadiz, Inc. Cadiz maintains it has the right to pump that water and sell it as it sees fit.

Environmentalists and many residents of the East Mojave are opposed to the project, and they maintain the project will deprive the already parched desert of its most precious resource, wreak ecological devastation to the environment and allow Cadiz, Inc. to appropriate water rights it does not legally possess to commandeer water and thereby privatize a public resource.

Cadiz has arranged for the Santa Margarita Water District, which lies 217 miles from the Cadiz Valley and will be the recipient of the lion’s share of the water to be obtained under the plan, to serve as the lead agency in the environmental certification of the project. Critics of the project say this is an unacceptable conflict of interest and have already cited shortcomings in the environmental impact report, claiming that document does not accurately describe or provide a mitigation for the impact the drafting of water will have on adjacent aquifers. Environmentalists maintain that ultimately the desert’s springs, which support the region’s fragile wildlife, will dry up if such vigorous pumping is initiated. During a three-and-a-half hour hearing on May 1, they pleaded with the county board of supervisors not to have the county enter into a memorandum of understanding with Cadiz, Inc. and the Santa Margarita Water District relative to the project.

Other critics of the project maintain that diverting the region’s water resources to Orange and Los Angeles Counties will sharply curtail or eliminate any future development potential in the East Mojave.
Supervisors at the May 1 hearing were told by Scott Slater, the president and general counsel for Cadiz, Inc., that the project would conserve water. They also heard from local contractors and vendors who stand to make money by working on or supplying materials for the pipeline to be constructed.

According to Christian Marsh, a contract attorney retained by the county to advise it on the Cadiz project, the memorandum of understanding does not give final approval to the project but puts a regime in place by which the project application being processed through the Santa Margarita Water District can be reviewed by the county, and provides the county with the authority to make an ultimate veto of the permitting of the project. He said the approval of that permit will likely be heard by the end of the summer.

Supervisor Neil Derry, expressing skepticism that the Santa Margarita Water District would give proper weight to the input of San Bernardino County residents and interests during the approval process for the project, was the sole dissent in a 4-1 vote to approve the memorandum of understanding.