Riders on the Storm

Democrats also use appropriations riders, despite recent protest.

Cadiz agricultural well head and pond in the Mojave Desert.

By Jim Swift
The Weekly Standard

A chorus of Democrats and activists are raising hackles about the potential of Republican policy riders being added to a year-end omnibus spending bill. Policy riders (or “limitation riders”) are the opposite of earmarks. Where the now-extinct earmark required money to be used on a certain project, a rider is a paragraph or two in an appropriations bill dictating what the money cannot be used for.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told Roll Call:

"The president, Pelosi, Reid, my entire caucus has agreed to hold hands. We are not going to approve anything that has all these ideological, short-sighted, crazy ideas; to do away with women’s health, to do away with clean air, to attack Dodd-Frank and all these.”

David Goldston, director of government affairs at the environmental group National Resources Defense Council told E & E News in an interview: “on riders there’s going to be a very private, intense tussle between Democrats and Republican leaders on whether spending bills will be used to block environmental progress.”

This, Majority Leader McConnell has said, is the likely outcome: “Both sides will get into a negotiation here at the Appropriations Committee level, and at the end of the day, there will be some riders.” Reid, however, has claimed “We don’t have any riders.”

The sudden about-face on riders from Democrats may seem strange, since in recent years Democrats have repeatedly sought and successfully secured policy riders. But, this is the first appropriations season during the Obama presidency where Republicans control both chambers, so now policy riders are a bad thing, of course.

It remains to be seen how far Democrats will go in their newfound opposition to riders. Just last week, 25 Democratic senators, a majority of that caucus, wrote to the president, urging him to “reject all spending bill riders that would undermine Endangered Species Act protections…” If Reid, Pelosi, and the President insist they’re quitting policy riders cold turkey, there are likely to be some Democratic casualties.

One of the biggest winners (and perhaps hypocrites) has been California senator Dianne Feinstein, who has used her position on the Appropriations Committee to stop a planned water project in her state. Feinstein has fought the project for 15 years.

The project is called the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project. Cadiz owns 34,000 acres of land in the Fenner Valley in San Bernadino County, and below it are millions of acre-feet of water. With an acre-foot clocking in at 326,000 gallons, that’s hundreds of billions of gallons of water. Currently, the project is a combined effort by Cadiz, the Arizona & California Railroad, and a handful of water districts, like the Santa Margarita Water District.

California, as most know, is experiencing severe drought, and the project’s backers say 400,000 Californians could benefit from this water, some of which would otherwise evaporate into the thin desert air. An Environmental Impact Report, required by California’s stringent Environmental Quality Act of 1970 observes the following about the Cadiz project:

"California’s Constitution mandates maximizing the reasonable and beneficial use of water and avoidance of waste. The fundamental purpose of the Project is to save substantial quantities of groundwater that are present wasted and lost to evaporation by natural processes. In the absence of this Project, approximately 3 million acre-feet of groundwater presently held in storage between the proposed wellfield and the Dry Lakes would become saline and evaporate over the next 100 years. By strategically managing groundwater levels, the Project would conserve up to 2 million acre-feet of this water, retrieving it from storage before it is lost to evaporation.”

But even given the water emergency, Feinstein and other opponents of the project aren’t relenting.

The project was tried once before, in the early 2000s, but with a different partner: the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Feinstein and two House colleagues wrote to the Bush-era Interior Department to express their concerns about such use of the aquifer and its potential impact on the desert, which Feinstein, as author of the California Desert Protection Act, has taken a special interest in.

The Bush Interior Department signed off on the project, which needed government approval to “wheel” the water across a Bureau of Land Management “right of way” via a 35-mile pipeline. Feinstein and environmental allies convinced the board of the Metropolitan Water District to reject the proposal, which it narrowly did, as the LA Times reported: “with 50.25% of the board’s weighted votes in favor.”

The environmental and anti-development activists at Public Citizen crowed: "Cadiz Water Privatization Project Permanently Stopped!"

Feinstein knew the truth, though: The Cadiz project and its backers weren't going to go quietly, which is why she inserted a policy rider into the FY07 continuing resolution that blocked any funding for the project.

Only when Cadiz revised and revived the project and began to make progress with its new partners, the Santa Margarita Water District and the Arizona & California Railroad, did Feinstein expand the rider— inserted into the FY10 Interior Appropriations Bill, which became law in 2009 — to tighten the noose with this clause:

“Sec. 110. (a) Any proposed new use of the Arizona & California Railroad Company's Right of Way for conveyance of water shall not proceed unless the Secretary of the Interior certifies that the proposed new use is within the scope of the Right of Way.”

The Feinstein rider, due to her clout in Congress, has remained in effect ever since. But now, with the clarion call of the Democratic leaders for Republicans to eschew policy riders in the year-end omnibus bill, the rider is at risk.

At an Appropriations Committee hearing in July, Feinstein complained at length about policy riders. E & E News reported it this way:

"Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) in turn lectured Republicans for using the spending bill to block environmental policies they oppose, arguing that doing so would result in a continuing resolution or omnibus package to fund the federal government come September.”

Feinstein argued that riders were just “a member really trying to impose their will to change a law on this bill, which is essentially a numbers bill of appropriations.” She further denounced the practice writ large:

“You shouldn’t do these on appropriations bills, if you want the appropriation bills to pass in regular order. Instead, there is no change for six years. It’s either a CR or an Omnibus, maybe a few things get stuck into an Omnibus, but what kind of progress is that for the people we serve in this nation? I don’t think it’s any real progress, and so, you’ve got this enormous conflict now between both sides. And I don’t know where this takes us, because we’re not going to let an appropriations bill succeed. What kind of long term sense does it make to continue in this way? So, I want to make a call for some sanity.”

Yet, despite this impassioned plea, her rider to block the Cadiz project had been included in the Interior Appropriations bill.

When asked whether Feinstein’s Cadiz rider would make it into yet another omnibus bill, a GOP aide on the Appropriations Committee responded: “We cannot offer any insight as to the ultimate fate of this provision, but it certainly illustrates that Democrats are plenty capable of using appropriations riders to pursue policy outcomes.”

When Feinstein complained about using policy riders as leverage for Senators to “impose their will to change a law,” she spoke from experience. That’s because her rider preventing the Cadiz project helped do just that.

To get the water to its new partners, Cadiz signed an agreement with the Arizona & California Railroad (ARZC), which has a right-of-way granted pursuant to the General Right-of-Way Act of 1875. This would enable Cadiz to deposit the water into the Colorado River Aqueduct, which services numerous water districts, including that of its new main partner, the Santa Margarita Water District.

In the case of railroads on public land, many rights-of-way are governed by the 1875 act, as is the case here. The 1875 Act is also subject to the interpretation by the courts, and by the legal opinions of the solicitor of the Department of the Interior, which oversees BLM. The solicitor issues “M opinions” that are intended to provide guidance to enforcement of public laws, and one, issued in 1989 (M-36964) effectively gave the green light to the Cadiz.

Back in the 1980s, MCI (a telecom that would later become Verizon), wanted to install fiber optic communications lines on a railroad right-of-way controlled by Southern Pacific Transportation Company. The decision clarified that Southern Pacific did not need to seek BLM’s approval to allow MCI to install the cable because it, even though a commercial venture, was “not inconsistent with railroad operations" because it benefited the railroad's operations.

The prospect of this M-Opinion, which Cadiz and the railroad believe they are in compliance with, horrified Feinstein. After securing the rider in the FY10 Interior Appropriations bill, she trumpeted the achievement in a letter to former Senate colleague and then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

“I write to bring to your attention language included in the FY10 Interior Appropriations bill regarding Cadiz LLC’s proposed use of the Arizona & California Railroad Right-of-Way (ROW) for a water conveyance pipeline in the Mojave Desert. I request that the Department start now to reexamine the previous administration’s position that the proposed pipeline does not require federal authorization.”

Feinstein wrote about a 2005 federal court opinion, Home on the Range v. AT&T Corp., which she claims the court “found that easements under the 1875 General Railroad Right-of-Way Act are limited to uses for railroad purposes, excluding non-rail activities analogous to the water pipeline here.”

The letter’s conclusion reinforced the ask: “I would like to request that the Department now initiate a review of its right-of-way policy regarding this project, as well as the Solicitor’s Opinion it is premised on, rather than waiting until the legislation is ultimately signed into law. It is my hope that by acting now, the Department can resolve the scope of the right-of-way promptly, rather than allowing legal questions and uncertainty to linger.”

Put another way, Feinstein went on record to say she’d hold up the project until BLM changed how it interpreted the law to her liking.

Two years after the letter was sent, the Interior Department did just what she asked, and issued M-37025, an M-Opinion from the Solicitor that withdrew the guidance provided by the 1989 M-Opinion that BLM approval was not required for activity not inconsistent with railroad operations.

The new M-Opinion provided that, in order to be within the scope of the Right-of-Way, “a railroad’s authority to undertake or authorize activities is limited to those activities that derives from or further a railroad purpose…” Only now, each activity “requires a fact specific case-by-case inquiry.”

The new M-Opinion was a setback, but still found that, in the case of MCI, its activity “furthered, at least in part, a railroad purpose…” and even that “…MCI’s line was primarily a commercial trunk line, a portion of its capacity was dedicated to the railroad.” Under the new guidance, Cadiz and the Arizona & California Railroad made their case to BLM as to why the water pipeline not only would further a railroad purpose, but would do so in a way that satisfies the underlying 1875 act itself.

In a 2013 staff memorandum to the Interior secretary, Jim Kenna, the director of the BLM in California, highlighted the design features in the water project that Cadiz and the railroad argued would further railroad purposes:

• Fire hydrants placed along railroad tracks for fire suppression.

• Access road to be constructed on leased area for railroad company for maintenance purposes or in case of emergencies such as rail car derailment;

• Access to 10,000 gallons of water per day for vegetation control, washing rail cars, offices, and other contemplated improvements;

• Access to power at meters located along the railroad tracks and emergency access to power at any location;

• Water service for steam powered locomotives, to be used as excursion trains.

• Right to connect and deliver water to any future water production facilities within the ROW to the pipeline and facilities.

The original 1875 act provides that the right of way is also granted for “ground adjacent to such right of way for station buildings, depots, machine shops, side tracks, turnouts, and water stations…”

The water stations Cadiz would supply are right there in the actual law. However, in a formal letter, BLM disagreed that the pipeline furthers railroad purposes. The letter is sadly comical, a Rube Goldberg exercise in futile bureaucratese.

The planned water suppression system, designed to remotely stop a disastrous trestle fire that could cripple the railroad for weeks?

“Use of water for fire suppression on creosote-treated timber is an uncommon industry practice, with dry sand being the preferred method, and thus the water-based hydrants and sprinklers, and fiber optic telemetry used to operate them do not derive from or further a railroad purpose. A BLM authorization is needed for use of fire suppression facilities along the 43 mile stretch of the ROWs that runs across BLM administered public land.”

The water stations for a steam-based tourism train? “may derive from or further a railroad purpose (emphasis added)…” but “…the excursion train’s prospective use of a small portion of the pipeline’s water does not convert the excursion train, the pipeline, or the water that runs through the pipeline into a legitimate railroad purpose.”

In other words, no, no, and… no: You have to get BLM approval now.

Except, BLM can’t even process an application from Cadiz and the ARZC even if it wanted to, as noted in a BLM memo:

“If a decision is made that the proposed use is not within the scope of the 1875 railroad ROW, such a pipeline would require a FLPMA ROW authorization from the BLM as it crosses BLM-managed lands. However, the processing of such a ROW would be prohibited this year, given the language in the 2012 Consolidated Appropriations Act H.R. 2055 118(b).”

The Cadiz project has bipartisan support in the House, as numerous Democrats and Republicans have written letters of support, and perhaps explains why the House Interior Appropriations bill does not contain the Feinstein rider.

While the BLM has shut the door to Cadiz and the ARZC’s quest to build the pipeline without their approval via an er, novel, interpretation of the law, if Feinstein’s anti-Cadiz rider isn’t included in the year-end omnibus, the project’s backers could apply for formal BLM approval. Other legal recourse, such as a lawsuit challenging BLM’s determination, is still on the table.

The question for Feinstein and Democrats is: How willing are they to part with policy riders on appropriations bills? In the coming weeks, we’ll find out, I guess, because Senator Feinstein’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Why the BLM’s decision on the Cadiz project was the right one

In this undated file photo provided by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, water flows through the Southern California desert in the Metropolitan Water District's Colorado River Aqueduct from the Colorado River to the Los Angeles area. A different water conveyance project by Cadiz continues to meet resistance. (AP Photo)

Guest commentary

By Adell L. Amos and Sam Kalen
San Bernardino County Sun

Officials at the Bureau of Land Management have to make a lot of sensitive decisions. But their recent decision that a 43-mile, 7-foot diameter groundwater pipeline does not further the purpose of an 1875 railroad right-of-way should not be controversial. It is as simple as this — a water pipeline project is something different than a railroad.

Despite tremendous pressure to shoehorn a massive groundwater pipeline into a century-old railroad right-of-way, the BLM made a rational decision that the proposal was not in furtherance of the railroad’s purpose. Scott Slater, president and General Counsel of Cadiz Inc., asserts that BLM should rescind that decision.

Cadiz Inc., a Los-Angeles based company, wants to build a pipeline to carry groundwater from a fragile Mojave Desert aquifer to southern California. It’s the kind of project that calls out for careful and considered decision-making by public officials. The project could have a significant impact on sensitive desert habitat and the interests of tribes, local communities and national parks nearby. In fact, such careful review was completed under state law, though it is now undergoing appeal by project opponents.

If BLM had sided with Cadiz and determined that this new water project furthered a railroad purpose, then the project could proceed without federal environmental reviews, tribal consultations and interagency coordination that would otherwise be required.

Not surprisingly, Cadiz had a profound interest in trying to convince the BLM that its proposal — which is about transporting valuable water to thirsty urban areas in southern California — was actually about advancing the railroad’s purpose.

Ultimately, the BLM made a straightforward and common-sense determination that the water pipeline does not further a railroad purpose. This decision ensures, if the project goes forward, it will be subject to appropriate public review. Instead of criticism, the BLM ought to be commended for its responsible management of public resources in the face of tremendous pressure from private interests.

To move forward now, Cadiz will be asked to do what any private developer on federal public land is asked to do — participate in an open, public process under federal law that evaluates the various impacts of the project. That is not a controversial notion in the least. Developers on public lands, though they might prefer to avoid it, engage in this kind of review all the time.

Many opponents of the Cadiz Project worry that this attempt to locate the project in an existing railroad right-of-way was a clever sleight of hand designed to circumvent an open and public evaluation of the impacts and consequences of this project under federal law. To the extent that these concerns about the impacts are unfounded, the federal review process will bear that out.

Perhaps Cadiz worries that the federal review will shed light on what some believe to be faulty scientific assumptions about the recharge rate of the aquifer, or the irreversible environmental harm that could come from pumping 1-2 million acre feet of precious desert groundwater for 50 years, or the impact to historic, natural and cultural resources including the Mojave National Preserve, the lower 48’s third-largest national park unit. More than a decade ago Cadiz proposed a very similar project and the federal environmental review process revealed many of these concerns. Many of these concerns are also at issue in the appeal challenging the state review process.

In the end, BLM exercised sound professional judgment in a climate where water is becoming increasingly scarce and highly valuable. Some estimates put the price of the water associated with the Cadiz project at $1-2 billion. BLM is not required to advance private interests to achieve maximum profit for their investors. Rather, BLM exists to manage, for multiple and often competing purposes, the public lands consistent with all applicable laws. In choosing this course, the BLM carried out its mandate with integrity toward the process and acted as a responsible steward of the public resources it is entrusted to manage.

Adell L. Amos is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Oregon School of Law. She is a former Deputy Solicitor for Land and Water Resources at the Department of Interior.

Sam Kalen is co-director of the Center for Law and Energy Resources in the Rockies at the University of Wyoming School of Law. He is a former Special Assistant for the Solicitor’s Office at the Department of the Interior.

Coachella Valley aquifer decline continues

Water from the Colorado River flows into a percolation pond at the Thomas E. Levy Groundwater Replenishment Facility in La Quinta. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Ian James
The Desert Sun

NASA researchers have studied the aquifer beneath the Coachella Valley and concluded that while flows of imported water have helped boost groundwater levels in places, much of the aquifer has continued to decline.

Scientists with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory analyzed trends in the measurements of groundwater levels in wells between 1960 and 2013.

They found that inflows of water from the Colorado River have helped raise the water table in areas near groundwater replenishment ponds in Palm Springs and La Quinta, but that the aquifer’s levels have been falling across the middle of the valley, in places from Thousand Palms to Indio, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, and Indian Wells – areas that are farther away from the ponds.

The study was published online last week by the journal Water Resources Management. The scientific findings fit with the results of The Desert Sun’s analyses of groundwater data in 2013 and 2015, which showed significant long-term declines in water levels in much of the valley even as imported water has helped partially counteract that trend. The study points to a need for the Coachella Valley’s people, businesses and water managers to better safeguard the aquifer to preserve water supplies for the future.

Hydrologists Brian F. Thomas and Jay Famiglietti used data for more than 300 wells to compare trends in different decades.

During the 1980s, for instance, the area received large allocations of surface water, and as a result groundwater levels rebounded around Palm Springs. In the 2000s, the valley received little water and the aquifer’s levels predominantly declined.

For decades, water has been heavily pumped from wells across the desert to sustain growing cities, farms, more than 100 golf courses and lush resorts with acres of grass and artificial lakes.

Since the 1970s, the Coachella Valley’s water agencies have been using water from the Colorado River Aqueduct to help recharge the aquifer near Palm Springs. The water has come in exchange for the local water districts’ allotted amounts from the canals and pipelines of the State Water Project, which ends in Lake Perris and doesn’t reach the valley.

During the past decade, water from the Colorado River has also been routed through the Coachella branch of the All-American Canal to a series of ponds in La Quinta, pushing up groundwater levels there.

Despite those efforts, average groundwater levels are approximately 19 meters, or 62 feet, lower than in 1960, the scientists said in the study. They noted that during periods when large amounts of surface water have flowed into the area, groundwater levels have risen. But during drier times, such as the 2000s or the current drought, “unsustainable groundwater practices in the region resulted in groundwater declines.”

The changes in groundwater levels over time, they said, “fail to exhibit characteristics of a resilient management strategy.”

“The scenario of continued unsustainable groundwater use in a region that relies heavily on groundwater resources to meet water demands has important implications for the region,” the researchers said, “especially given the uncertainty in future climate changes and the likelihood of increased droughts… and the uncertainty of future allocations from the Colorado River.”

In short, Thomas said, the findings point to a need for people to use and manage water differently in the Coachella Valley.

“They need to conserve water,” Thomas said in a telephone interview. He said he thinks the Coachella Valley also should manage the aquifer as the area’s primary water source and not rely so heavily on outside sources of surface water as it has in the past.

The Colorado River provides water for more than 35 million people across the West and irrigates vast stretches of farmland from the Rocky Mountains to Mexico. But its flows have been shrinking during a historic drought that’s now in its 16th year. Global warming is projected to put additional strains on the over-tapped river by shrinking the snows in the mountains and unleashing more severe droughts.

Flows of water to Southern California through the State Water Project have also dwindled during the drought.

Thomas said the trend in the 2000s, when groundwater levels were declining across the Coachella Valley, is similar to the situation now.

“And I think that’s really the future of the Coachella Valley,” he said. “When you look at the uncertainty of climate in the Southwestern U.S. and the uncertainty of surface water allocations coming out of the Colorado River basin, I think the reality of the situation for the Coachella Valley is what they saw in the 2000s. … It was depletion throughout the valley.”

The study focused on “sustainable groundwater management” and didn’t deal with the question of how much water remains in the aquifer – something experts aren’t sure of because it hasn’t been studied in detail.

Water agencies have calculated the cumulative overdraft since the 1970s at more than 5.3 million acre-feet of water. That's enough to fill more than 2.6 million Olympic swimming pools, with each acre-foot equivalent to 325,851 gallons.

As groundwater levels have declined, there have been costs. Pumping from deeper underground requires more electricity, and in some areas new wells have been drilled.

A study by the U.S. Geological Survey last year found that as groundwater pumping has led to declines in portions of the aquifer, the ground sank from between 9 inches to 2 feet from 1995 to 2010 in parts of Indian Wells, La Quinta and Palm Desert. That has caused damage in other parts of the Coachella Valley over the years, cracking the foundations of some homes and damaging swimming pools, roads and other infrastructure.

The USGS found that the Coachella Valley Water District's efforts to recharge the aquifer are having a positive effect near the groundwater replenishment ponds in La Quinta.

“We have to give credit to the water agencies. They’re actually employing very smart strategies,” Thomas said. “It’s obviously having a positive impact on groundwater resources. It’s just that (the impacts) are not extensive when you look at the entire aquifer system as a whole.”

CVWD General Manager Jim Barrett said when contacted about the research that he had just learned of the study and couldn’t comment on the findings.

John Powell, Jr., president of the CVWD board, has said the agency is evaluating potential sites for new groundwater replenishment ponds in the middle of the valley in order to reduce pressures on the aquifer in that area.

The long-term declines in the aquifer fit with a larger trend of groundwater depletion in much of California, and in various parts of the world.

Famiglietti, a UC Irvine professor and senior water scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, recently co-authored another study that found more than half of the world’s largest aquifers are declining, and more than a third of them are being rapidly depleted.

Thomas, a postdoctoral researcher at the California Institute of Technology, said he thinks that for the Coachella Valley, improving the water picture starts with coming up with ways to use less.

“If it were up to me, people would not have lawns in Palm Springs,” Thomas said. “Lawns, that’s something that is not necessary in a desert environment. And that’s just one of the things that’s key to a conservation strategy.”

In the acknowledgments in their study, the scientists credited The Desert Sun’s coverage “for alerting us about the growing concern over groundwater overdraft in the valley.”

Thomas spoke about his research last year to an audience at UC Riverside’s Palm Desert campus.

"There's no easy answer,” he said during the event. “Everybody has to give up a piece of their water use to get to sustainability."

Eagle Mountain hydropower plant takes big step forward

A massive iron ore mining pit at Eagle Mountain in the remote desert east of the Coachella Valley. The Eagle Mountain iron mine was built in 1948 and closed in 1982. Today, some conservationists believe the old mine should become part of Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides. Eagle Mountain is just miles from the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar plant, which is set to come fully online in January, and the small town of Desert Center. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

A controversial proposal to build a hydropower plant in the shadow of Joshua Tree National Park cleared a major hurdle Wednesday, in a surprising development that frustrated conservationists but encouraged some renewable energy advocates.

After two decades of trying to acquire the old Eagle Mountain iron mine — which was carved out of the southeast corner of Joshua Tree more than 60 years ago — the Eagle Crest Energy Company has finally succeeded. The Los Angeles-based firm announced Wednesday that it has purchased the site from the company formerly known as Kaiser Ventures, which built the long-dormant iron mine and for years refused to sell.

Eagle Crest's plan to build a 1,300-megawatt hydroelectric power plant — using billions of gallons of groundwater that would be drawn from an underground aquifer — still has to overcome several regulatory obstacles. But the proposal is now closer than ever to becoming a reality.

The project's backers say it would help California build more solar and wind power, a key priority as the state moves toward a 50 percent renewable energy mandate. The hydroelectric plant would work like a battery, storing excess energy generated by solar and wind farms when supply exceeds demand, and then releasing that energy when demand exceeds supply.

"As Riverside County continues to increase its role in delivering renewable power to the rest of California, we need to find ways to store energy for use at times when solar and wind are not generating power," county Supervisor John Benoit said in a statement released by Eagle Crest. "This project helps make renewable energy sources more viable, and in an environmentally sensitive manner."

But conservation groups and national parks advocates have slammed the proposal, saying it would waste water, harm several threatened species and use more energy than it generates. Many of them want to see Eagle Mountain added to Joshua Tree National Park, saying it has historic value as a well-preserved mining boomtown, in addition to conservation value.

"The costs significantly outweigh the benefits here," said David Lamfrom, California desert program director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "Whether you're looking at it from the angle of water or the angle of wildlife, this corporation wins and the public loses."

Nothing is simple when it comes to Eagle Mountain, which has been the subject of fiery debate in recent years.

Industrialist Henry Kaiser founded the iron mine and built the adjacent town in the 1950s, but the mine was shut down in the early 1980s as production of steel in the United States waned. For more than 25 years, the Kaiser subsidiary that still owned the site wanted to sell it to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, which would have turned it into a massive garbage dump. But that plan got tied up in court, and eventually the agency backed off.

Even when that plan fell through, Kaiser officials insisted they wouldn't sell the site to Eagle Crest, saying they had received a great deal of interest from mining companies. Eagle Mountain still has millions of tons of iron ore.

The deal with Eagle Crest is something of a compromise, because Kaiser will retain the right to sell rock and iron ore tailings that already sit in plain view at Eagle Mountain. A Kaiser representative didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but the company will presumably try to sell that right to another company, since it has been in bankruptcy for several years.

That deal will no doubt frustrate conservationists, who oppose the hydropower plant as well as further mining.

In order to fill the reservoirs of the hydroelectric plant, about nine billion gallons of groundwater would be pumped from the aquifer under the Chuckwalla Valley over a period of four years. Eagle Crest officials have argued that's a small fraction of the groundwater held in the aquifer, and equivalent to the annual consumption of two Coachella Valley golf courses.

Conservation groups, though, say that kind of water consumption is irresponsible, especially during a historic drought. Park officials also worry that drawing on the aquifer could harm threatened species in and around the park.

"The potential that we could substantially deplete all of the springs in these three basins terrifies me," David Smith, superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, told The Desert Sun last year. "It has the potential for wiping out bighorn sheep populations from all those areas."

Local activists have also accused Kaiser of illegally conspiring with state mining officials to keep control of Eagle Mountain, arguing that the company should have been required to give the site back to the federal government after it stopped mining iron.

For renewable energy advocates, the question of how to ramp up intermittent renewables like solar and wind — which only generate electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows — has long been a major challenge. With Californian lawmakers likely to adopt a 50 percent renewable energy mandate in the next few months, that challenge has become more pressing.

Right now, utility companies generally turn to natural gas-fired power plants, which contribute to climate change, to help integrate more solar and wind onto the grid. Some renewable energy experts say "pumped storage" projects like Eagle Mountain can help reduce the need for natural gas.

That argument appealed to Benoit, a longtime renewable energy supporter. The Riverside County supervisor said that while more environmental review is needed, he's hopeful the project's benefits will outweigh its potential impacts on water and wildlife.

"Those are issues that will be evaluated thoroughly in the environmental process," he said in an interview. "My guess is, it will come in on the side of, 'Yes, it does make sense.'"

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted a license for the Eagle Mountain hydroelectric plant last year, but the proposal still needs to clear several legal hurdles, despite Eagle Crest now owning the land.

For one, the National Park Service petitioned the energy commission to reconsider its decision last August, and the agency has yet to respond to that request. Eagle Crest also still needs approval from the federal Bureau of Land Management to build transmission lines across public lands.

The biggest obstacle, though, could be pushback from local activists and national parks advocates, who could try to keep the hydroelectric plant tied up in court. Some have pointed out that parts of Eagle Mountain are designated for conservation under the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, an ongoing state-federal effort that would lay the ground rules for the next 25 years of clean energy development and conservation across the California desert.

Eagle Crest submitted comments to the Bureau of Land Management asking it to reverse those designations.

Project pumping desert water for O.C. to begin next year

Cadiz Valley Water Project

BY TOMOYA SHIMURA
Orange County Register

Construction for a project that will pump drinking water from a Mojave Desert aquifer and pipe it to south Orange County is slated to begin early next year.

Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. plans to install wells to capture water from the natural aquifer that lies beneath 70 square miles of remote valley east of Twentynine Palms. The private developer which owns the land would also build an underground 43-mile pipeline along railroad right-of-way to the Colorado River Aqueduct, which delivers water to Southern California residents.

Once built, Cadiz plans to lease the facilities to a joint powers authority created by the Santa Margarita Water District, which will oversee day-to-day operation of the well and pipeline.

Santa Margarita hopes the project will reduce the district’s reliance on the wholesaler Metropolitan Water District, from which Santa Margarita buys 85 percent of its water. The MWD has increased water prices over the last two decades.

The well would pump some 16 billion gallons of water a year, and Santa Margarita plans to purchase about 20 percent of its water supply from the project. The district serves 165,000 people in Coto de Caza, Ladera Ranch, Rancho Santa Margarita and parts of Mission Viejo and San Clemente.

However, the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project has met resistance from a coalition of environmental groups, who argue the project would dry up desert springs and hurt vegetation and wildlife habitat.

The groups filed lawsuits after the project was approved by Santa Margarita’s board and San Bernardino County supervisors in 2012.

The plaintiffs claimed that Santa Margarita, not in the area the project will affect, shouldn’t have been the lead agency to oversee environmental reviews for Cadiz. They also said San Bernardino County violated its desert groundwater ordinance by approving the project.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Gail Andler shot down the lawsuits last year, stating that the plaintiffs had failed to prove the project would violate state environmental laws.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Sierra Club and San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society then appealed the decision to the state’s Fourth Appellate District in Santa Ana and filed their opening briefs in April.

“All cases were resoundingly denied in superior court, and we stand by that record and we think everything will be upheld by the court of appeals,” Cadiz spokeswoman Courtney Degener said.

The company is waiting for the MWD board to approve moving Cadiz water through its aqueduct later this summer and plans to start construction at the beginning of next year, she said. Cadiz is expected to spend $225 to $275 million on construction.

In addition to Santa Margarita, Cadiz has entered into agreements with the following water providers interested in buying water from the project, Degener said. They include: Three Valleys Municipal Water District, Jurupa Community Services District, Golden State Water Company, Suburban Water Systems, California Water Service Company, Lake Arrowhead Community Services District and San Luis Water District.

Water grab pits Las Vegas against Mormons

Spring Valley, which sits atop an aquifer 263 miles from the country clubs and casinos of Las Vegas, is the focus of a Nevada legal fight over water rights.

BY EDVARD PETTERSSON
Bloomberg News

Las Vegas is seeking to quench its growing thirst by draining billions of gallons of water from under the feet of ranchers whose cattle help feed the Mormon church's poor.

A legal battle across 275 miles of treeless ridges and baked salt flats comes as the western U.S. faces unprecedented droughts linked to climate change.

The surface of Las Vegas's main source of water, Lake Mead, is more than 100 feet below Hoover Dam's spillways after reaching the lowest mark last summer since the dam was filled. As it seeks new sources, the city's water supplier is waging a court fight over plans to suck as much as 27 billion gallons a year from the valley that is home to the Mormon ranch and its 1,750-head herd, as well as three other rural valleys.

Casino resorts, five of which are Southern Nevada's largest commercial water users, labor unions and the developer of a 22,500-acre mini-city west of Las Vegas argue their future depends on the water supply that the church, Indian tribes and environmental groups say is needed by local communities.

The fight, likely to echo across the increasingly arid West, conjures up the Los Angeles water grab that turned the once prosperous Owens Valley into a dust bowl.

As cities including Denver and Phoenix look to secure water for growing populations and economies, the prospect of sustained droughts, more severe and sustained than any in the 20th century, looms over Nevada's court battle, with one pipeline opponent calling it the "poster child" for future showdowns.

The 7,000-acre Cleveland Ranch, established in Spring Valley in 1873 by Maine native Abner "Old Cleve" Cleveland and bought in 2000 by the Mormon church, sits atop an aquifer a dozen-plus miles to the north of Route 50, known from postcards as "America's Loneliest Highway."

The ranch, owned by the Corporation of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is worked by a combination of paid employees, church missionaries and other volunteers, according to a history of the ranch. The calves, after they are weaned, are shipped to an Idaho feed lot and then to a processing plant, where some of the meat is frozen or canned as stew and beef chunks for distribution around the world.

If the Southern Nevada Water Authority wins in court, its proposed groundwater project may leave the valley to sage brush and coyotes, according to lawyers for the church and environmentalists.

"This is a huge project that raises fundamental questions," said Paul Hejmanowski, a lawyer for the church. "Can we sacrifice an ancient way of life for a growing metropolis?"

So far, the ranch and other project opponents have fended off Las Vegas, convincing a judge in 2013 that there was insufficient scientific evidence for the state engineer's decision to award the water rights.

The Nevada Resorts Association, the Nevada AFL-CIO, representing members of 120 unions, and developer Howard Hughes Corp. support the water authority's and state engineer's petitions to the state Supreme Court for help. A hearing before the court hasn't been scheduled.

"There are no other alternatives available, and it would increase the region's water security," said Virginia Valentine, president of the casino and resort trade group. "Our infrastructure needs to be there."

The five resorts - the Wynn Las Vegas, Mandalay Bay, Venetian, Bellagio and Caesars Palace - consumed 2.4 billion gallons in 2013, according to the water authority. Other large users include the golf and country clubs that surround Las Vegas, an area whose population has almost tripled since 1990 to 2 million.

The leisure and hospitality sector employs 28 percent of Nevada's workforce and the taxes it pays make up 47 percent of the state's general fund.

Those economics may doom Cleveland Ranch even if pipeline opponents have a good case, said Jeffrey Dintzer, a lawyer specializing in water-rights issues with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP in Los Angeles who isn't involved in the dispute.

"Money talks," Dintzer said. "Nevada gets a huge amount of its revenue from gaming."

If the Nevada Supreme Court doesn't reverse the December 2013 decision by the state judge who second-guessed the state engineer, the Legislature and governor may step in to draft a compromise to ensure Las Vegas gets the water, Dintzer said.

That might not end the lawsuits. If the ranch and surrounding valleys are left dry, the state could face hundreds of millions of dollars in claims, he said.

"This will be one of many of these disputes I see coming in the future," said Ed Casey, a water-rights attorney with Alston & Bird LLP, who represented Los Angeles in litigation over air pollution at Owens Lake. "Water is a commonly shared commodity, and as it becomes scarce, we have to face the question who gets priority."

Ranchers, farmers and other so-called senior water rights holders may lose their place at the pump to growing cities, Casey said.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority is pursuing unassigned groundwater rights to reduce its reliance on the Colorado River, which accounts for about 90 percent of its supply and is subject to new upstream diversions as drought conditions worsen.

With Lake Mead - the largest man-made reservoir in the U.S. - at 43 percent of its capacity, the agency already has increased its use of recycled water and cut its per-capita use by 40 percent since 2002, said Bronson Mack, a spokesman for the authority. Still, the agency expects to need new sources by about 2060, based on current estimates, or as soon as 2035 if population growth exceeds forecasts, Mack said.

The agency's groundwater project calls for 263 miles of pipelines connecting Las Vegas with four valleys. U.S. approval of the pipeline is subject to a separate legal challenge in federal court.

As far back as 1989, the Las Vegas Valley Water District, now part of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, applied for unappropriated water in Cave Valley, Dry Lake, Delamar Valley and Spring Valley. The state engineer didn't rule on those applications until 2007, leading to the first round of litigation, which voided the approvals.

In 2012, the state engineer again approved most of the water authority's applications, leading to a new round of court battles.

The Nevada case may set a precedent for urban water districts in arid and semi-arid regions looking for groundwater to sustain development, said Simeon Herskovits, a lawyer for counties, water agencies, environmental groups and businesses opposed to the project.

"This is kind of a poster child case for pro-development interests in urban centers trying to take water away from rural areas through a large infrastructure project by arguing, based on bad science, that vast amounts of water are available for extraction and export," Herskovits said.

A defeat for the project may force water agencies in the West to find other alternatives, he said.

If Las Vegas builds the pipeline, an area the size of New England could face the same environmental and socio-economic devastation as California's Owens Valley after completion of the 200-mile Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, he said.

Cleveland Ranch and other opponents persuaded Senior District Judge Robert Este in Ely, the only city within 100 miles of Spring Valley, that it was premature to approve large-scale pumping before its effects were fully known. He directed the state engineer to further develop mitigation protocols for any "unreasonable" effects of the project.

While the church declined to discuss Cleveland Ranch, its lawyer provided a copy of a DVD about the ranch that details its operations and makes the case that an abundant water supply is essential to raising healthy calves. The DVD was submitted as evidence in the court fight.

The Nevada Supreme Court on Feb. 6 dismissed the water authority's appeal of Este's decision, saying it wasn't ripe for review because the judge sent the case back to the state engineer without issuing a final judgment.

In a second bid, the water authority and the engineer asked the state's seven-member Supreme Court to use a procedure called a writ, which doesn't require a final judgment in the underlying case, to overturn Este's decision. They contend the judge acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" by substituting his judgment for that of the state engineer, an expert in hydrology.

"The worsening drought conditions in the West generally, and the Colorado River Basin in particular, do not afford the luxury of time," the water authority said in a Dec. 12 court filing. "This court should hear this petition, and resolve these issues, now."

SMWD establishes agency to oversee Cadiz groundwater project

By TOMOYA SHIMURA
Orange County Register

A project that will pump drinking water from a Mojave Desert aquifer and pipe it to south Orange County has taken another step forward.

The Santa Margarita Water District board of directors recently approved establishing the Fenner Valley Water Authority to control and operate the delivery of the groundwater.

The district is moving forward with the plan after an Orange County Superior Court judge in May shot down lawsuits filed over the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project by environmental groups trying to stop the project.

District spokesman Jonathan Volzke said operating under the joint powers authority shields Santa Margarita and its customers from liabilities.

Los Angeles-based Cadiz Inc. plans to install wells to capture water from the natural aquifer that lies beneath 70 square miles of remote valley east of Twentynine Palms. The private developer which owns the land would also build an underground 43-mile pipeline along railroad right-of-way to the Colorado River Aqueduct, which delivers water to Southern California residents.

Cadiz is estimated to spend $225 to $275 million for the construction, spokeswoman Courtney Degener said.

There’s no timeline for the beginning of construction, Degener said. The company needs to reach an agreement with the Metropolitan Water District of Los Angeles on moving water through its aqueduct, she said.

The opposition has so far filed appeals in four of the six lawsuits, but the project will continue moving forward regardless, Degener said.

The well would pump some 16 billion gallons of water a year, and Volzke said Santa Margarita plans to purchase at least 5,000 acre feet a year, or 20 percent of its water supply, from the Cadiz project. The district serves 165,000 people in Coto de Caza, Ladera Ranch, Rancho Santa Margarita and parts of Mission Viejo and San Clemente.

Santa Margarita buys 85 percent of its water from the Metropolitan Water District, which has increased water prices each year for the last two decades, Volzke said. The Cadiz project could reduce the district’s reliance on the Metropolitan Water District.

“It would give us more local control over the cost of water,” Volzke said.

Once built, Cadiz plans to lease the facilities to the Fenner Valley Water Authority, which will oversee day-to-day operation of the well and pipeline.

Cadiz is trying to reach an agreement with other water agencies that have shown interest in buying water from the project, Degener said. They include: Jurupa Community Services District, Golden State Water Company, Suburban Water Systems, California Water Service Company and Three Valleys Municipal Water District, San Luis Water District and Lake Arrowhead Community Services District.

The race to stop Las Vegas from running dry

Amid a brutal drought the reservoir that supplies 90 per cent of Las Vegas’s water is fast disappearing and desperate attempts to save Sin City are under way

Lake Mead: boaters seen in front of a white "bathtub ring" on the rocks on the upstream side of the Hoover Dam. (Photo: Getty)

By Nick Allen
The Telegraph

Las Vegas -- Outside Las Vegas’s Bellagio hotel tourists gasp in amazement as fountains shoot 500ft into the air, performing a spectacular dance in time to the music of Frank Sinatra.

Gondolas ferry honeymooners around canals modelled on those of Venice, Roman-themed swimming pools stretch for acres, and thousands of sprinklers keep golf courses lush in the middle of the desert.

But, as with many things in Sin City, the apparently endless supply of water is an illusion. America’s most decadent destination has been engaged in a potentially catastrophic gamble with nature and now, 14 years into a devastating drought, it is on the verge of losing it all.

“The situation is as bad as you can imagine,” said Tim Barnett, a climate scientist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “It’s just going to be screwed. And relatively quickly. Unless it can find a way to get more water from somewhere Las Vegas is out of business. Yet they’re still building, which is stupid.”

The crisis stems from the Las Vegas’s complete reliance on Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, which was created by the Hoover Dam in 1936 - after which it took six years to fill completely.

It is located 25 miles outside the city and supplies 90 per cent of its water. But over the last decade, as Las Vegas’s population has grown by 400,000 to two million, Lake Mead has slowly been drained of four trillion gallons of water and is now well under half full. Mr Barnett predicts it may be a “dead pool” that provides no water by about 2036.

The lake currently looks as if someone has removed a giant plug from it.

Around its edges a strip of bleached rock known locally as the “bath tub ring” towers like the White Cliffs of Dover, showing where the water level used to be. Pyramid-shaped mountains rise from the shallow waters.

Tying up his 15ft boat at the water’s edge Tom Merrit, 51, who has fished on the lake for years, pointed to the top of a faraway hill and said: “My boat used to be right up there. We’ve had to keep moving down and down as the water recedes.”

“That rock never used to be there,” he added, gesturing to a newly-emerging island several hundred feet long. “It’s really sad because this used to be a great lake. But if they don’t do something soon it’ll be gone.”

Lake Mead’s water level is currently at 1,087ft above sea level. There are two pipes, known as “straws”, that take water from it to Las Vegas.

The first extracts water at an elevation of 1,050ft and is likely to be sucking at air, rather than water, soon. The second straw is at 1,000ft.

Lake Mead is expected to fall another 20ft towards that critical point by the end of this year.

Beneath the ground a mammoth effort is already under way to complete a new, lower straw which will be able to draw the last of the water from the lake.

But it is a painfully slow process as a giant drill the size of two football pitches advances at a rate of one inch per day.

That rescue project is costing $817 million and is currently expected to be complete by late 2015, but it is not viewed as a long-term solution.

Las Vegas also wants to build a separate $15.5 billion pipeline that would pump 27 billion gallons of groundwater a year from an aquifer 260 miles away in rural Nevada.

But a judge has refused permission after environmentalists sued on the basis that it would adversely affect 5,500 acres of meadows, 33 miles of trout streams, and 130,000 acres of habitat used by sage grouse, mule deer, elk and pronghorn, an antelope-like creature that is endangered in the region. The court heard that 25 species of Great Basin springsnails would be pushed toward extinction.

Rob Mrowka, a Las Vegas-based scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity, which brought the legal case against the pipeline, said: “It’s a really dumb-headed proposition. It would provide a false sense of security that there’s plenty of water and it would delay the inevitable decisions that have to be taken about water conservation and restricting growth.

“The drought is like a slow spreading cancer across the desert. It’s not like a tornado or a tsunami, bang. The effects are playing out over decades. And as the water situation becomes more dire we are going to start having to talk about the removal of people (from Las Vegas).”

Mr Mrowka cited Lake Las Vegas, a mega-resort where stars including Celine Dion live, as one of the “most egregious examples” of wasting water.

He said: “It’s a community for the rich and famous and it has a 320-acre lake filled with three billion gallons of water from Lake Mead. That’s three billion gallons of drinking water, and each year they take millions more to keep it from stagnating and smelling.”

Las Vegas gets just four inches of rain in a good year, and in the first four months of 2014 there was just 0.31 of an inch.

The Southern Nevada Water Authority, which has the task of keeping the city from running dry, has described the effects of the drought as “every bit as serious as a Hurricane Katrina or a Superstorm Sandy”.

But spokesman JC Davis said water-hogging developments like Lake Las Vegas were “artifacts from an earlier time that wouldn’t be allowed today.”

He said: “The days of having things like a shopping center lined with grass are over.”

Even environmentalists acknowledge that the glitzy hotels on the Las Vegas Strip have made big strides toward using water wisely.

The Strip now uses only seven per cent of the city’s water while accounting for 70 per cent of its economy.

All the water from sinks and showers in hotel rooms is recycled, and even water from some lavatories ends up treated and back in Lake Mead.

Some hotels automatically only wash bedroom linen once every two days, and restaurants have stopped serving glasses of water unless requested to do so.

While it may look extravagant the Bellagio fountain does not in fact use water from Lake Mead, instead being filled from an underground lake on the hotel’s land which is undrinkable anyway.

However, Las Vegas still uses 219 gallons of water per person per day, one of the highest figures in the US. In San Francisco the figure is just 49 gallons.

Most of that water is used to sprinkle golf courses, parks and lawns so the water authority has declared war on grass, paying homeowners to remove it from their gardens at the rate of $1.50 per square foot.

So far 165 million square feet of turf has been destroyed. Laid end to end in an 18-inch strip it would stretch 90 per cent of the way around the Earth.

“I’ve lost count of how much grass I’ve ripped up,” said Matt Baroudi, 53, an award-winning British landscape designer who moved to Las Vegas 15 years ago and installs eco-friendly gardens and back yards.

“Today I’ve just taken out a lawn that will save 20,000 gallons of water a year. People are changing but I think ultimately they will have to made it illegal to sell grass seeds.

“I go boating on Lake Mead and I’ve watched it dry up. It’s just astonishing. You see a rock poking out and then three weeks later it’s 15ft high. I don’t know what they are going to do.”

There is pressure on the neighbouring state of California to take pity on Las Vegas and give it water. But California is dealing with its own three-year drought, possibly its worst in half a millennium, which Governor Jerry Brown has described as “epochal”.

100 per cent of California is now classified as in “severe drought” and rivers are so low 27 million young migrating salmon are having to be taken to the ocean in trucks.

Nevada and California are just two of seven states that rely for water on the 1,450-mile Colorado River, which rises in the Rocky Mountains and used to empty into the Gulf of California in Mexico - but which now rarely reaches the sea, running dry before that.

In 1922 seven US states - California, Nevada, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico - first divided up how much river water each could use, and the amounts have been bitterly contested ever since, including by Mexico, which also takes water from it.

One proposal is for landlocked Nevada to pay billions of dollars to build solar-powered desalination plants in the Pacific off Mexico, taking Mexico’s share of Colorado River water in exchange.

But Mr Mrowka said: “The Colorado is essentially a dying river. Ultimately, Las Vegas and our civilisation in the American South West is going to disappear, like the Indians did before us.”

Judge rejects environmental challenges to Mojave groundwater project

An aerial view of Cadiz Inc. property in the Mojave Desert in 2012. (Al Seib / LA Times)

by Bettina Boxal
Los Angeles Times

In a one-page ruling, an Orange County Superior Court judge last week swept aside environmental challenges to Cadiz Inc.’s plans to pump groundwater from beneath the Mojave Desert and sell it to Southern California suburbs.

The May 1 decision by Judge Gail Andler cleared one set of obstacles to the controversial project. “We’re grateful for that result,” Cadiz Chief Executive Scott Slater said. “We’re going to keep our head down and keep going about things the right way.”

But opponents vowed to appeal the ruling, and Cadiz still has several other hoops to jump through.

Lawsuits filed by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, and Tetra Technologies Inc., a corporation that extracts an industrial salt from the desert aquifer, challenged the project’s environmental review, calling it inadequate.

They also contended that San Bernardino County should have led the review, rather than the Santa Margarita Water District, which has signed an agreement to buy water from Cadiz.

Andler expressed concern over the district’s lead role but concluded that it “did not rise to the level” of a violation of state environmental law.

Adam Keats, senior counsel with the biological center, said his organization will appeal the decision. “This is a long-haul game for us, and we’re not giving up that easily. This is one opinion.”

Conservation groups, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and federal scientists have expressed concern that the pumping operation could dry up springs used by wildlife in the nearby Mojave National Preserve.

Groundwater in Cadiz’s proposed well field also contains naturally occurring hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen, at levels of 14 parts per billion to 16 parts per billion, exceeding the state’s new drinking water standard of 10 parts per billion.

That is likely to complicate Cadiz’s plans to use the Colorado River Aqueduct to deliver its supplies to customers more than 100 miles to the west.

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which owns the aqueduct and uses it to send river water to millions of Southland residents, has said in formal comments that the Cadiz supplies would have to be treated before they could be pumped into the aqueduct.

“We’re pretty close to the standard,” Slater said. “We just don’t think it’s a significant issue for us.”

Also unresolved is whether the project will have to undergo a lengthy federal review. Cadiz wants to build a pipeline from the well field along an existing railroad right-of-way that crosses federal land.


The project is a precedent-setting private venture that proposes to annually withdraw enough groundwater from beneath the parched Mojave to supply 100,000 homes. Water sales could bring Cadiz $1 billion to $2 billion in revenue over 50 years.

Environmental documents show that the pumping would, over the long term, lower the groundwater table and deplete the aquifer under Cadiz’s property as well as surrounding public lands.

Cadiz experts have dismissed concerns about the operation, saying it will have minimal environmental effects.

Court OKs Dicey Cadiz Groundwater Pumping Project in the Mojave Desert

Ken Broder
AllGov.com

An Orange County Superior Court judge lined up six lawsuits filed to stop a controversial groundwater pumping project in the Mojave Desert and shot them all done in one brief legal opinion.

Judge Gail Andler ruled last week that Cadiz Inc. can move forward on its plan to divert surplus water from the Colorado River to an aquifer beneath 35,000 acres of land it owns, augment that supply by capturing water otherwise lost to nature, pump 16 billion gallons of water a year out of the aquifer and ship it via a 43-mile pipeline that hasn’t been built yet to the Colorado River Aqueduct.

The aquifer would be maximized with state-of-the-art conservation; participating water districts would contract for a share; thirsty Southern Californians would have a new, innovative source of water; and Cadiz shareholders would make a lot money. The shareholders got a jump on their end of the deal when the stock price rose around 30% the first business day after last Friday’s court ruling.

Cadiz has been pursuing the project for more than a decade, fending off environmentalists, desert residents, nearby mining interests, political watchdogs, water district officials and one honked-off Los Angeles Times columnist.

Michael Hiltzik described the project in 2009 in rather unflattering terms, seven years after the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) had already rejected it. He dismissed the existence of “surplus” Colorado River water, questioned the amount of water said to already be in the aquifer, wondered about the environmental hurdles and detailed some of the political wheels that were greased to advance the project.

Cadiz CEO and Board Chairman Keith Brackpool was appointed to the state Horse Racing Commission in 2009 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was elected chairman in 2010 before leaving last year. Schwarzenegger’s chief of staff, Susan Kennedy, worked for Cadiz for awhile and in 2005 received $120,000 in consulting fees while serving on the state Public Utilities Commission (PUC).

Brackpool and his associates contributed $43,650 to then-Los Angeles Mayor (and former Assembly Speaker) Antonio Villaraigosa and paid him a consultant fee while he was in between political assignments. He donated $345,000 to various campaigns by former Governor Gray Davis. San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt picked up $10,000 in campaign contributions in 2007-08 and Congressman Jim Costa of Fresno received $12,000.

Conservation groups have long opposed the Cadiz project over concerns that pumping water from the aquifer would dry up springs that support bighorn sheep and other wildlife. Air quality and groundwater beneath the Mojave Preserve also could be affected. They said the environmental impact report and groundwater management plan were deficient and challenged the role of the Santa Margarita Water District in Orange County in approving them.

Delaware Tetra Technologies, Inc., a mining company, filed suit against the project at one point, arguing that a drop in the water table would adversely affect the mining of salt in nearby dry lake beds.

All of the objections hit a dead end in Judge Andler’s court, at least temporarily, although she expressed some reservations. Andler said the water district, which wants to buy some of the water, might not be the right entity to serve as lead agency. But she wasn’t going to block the project over that.

Litigants in the case, including the Center for Biological Diversity, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, the San Gorgonio Sierra Club and the National Parks Conservation Association, may appeal. Even if they don’t, Cadiz still faces significant challenges. The company has to build a pipeline across public land, which may involve federal review.

Judge rules in favor of water mining

By Janet Zimmerman
Riverside Press-Enterprise

A judge on Friday rejected legal challenges filed against a controversial plan to mine water from a desert aquifer and pipe it to cities across Southern California.

Orange County Superior Court Judge Gail Andler issued a brief decision that clears the way for the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project 40 miles east of Twentynine Palms.

“Cadiz is grateful for the thorough and deliberate review by the trial court and the court’s validation of the environmental review,” Scott Slater, the company’s chief executive officer, said in a statement.

The ambitious proposal to pump an average of 50,000 acre-feet per year — more than 16 billion gallons — from beneath the remote valley was challenged by the Center for Biological Diversity, National Parks Conservation Association, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society, Sierra Club San Gorgonio chapter and Delaware Tetra, a brine-mining operation in the area.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity in Los Angeles, said the decision may be appealed.

“We are very disappointed,” she said.

The groups challenged project approvals by the Santa Margarita Water District in Orange County and San Bernardino County supervisors, as well as the environmental review, environmental impact report and groundwater management plan.

In her decision, Andler expressed concern over the designation of Santa Margarita Water District as the lead agency.

“Nonetheless, the court is not persuaded that those concerns constitute sufficient grounds” to halt the project, she wrote.

Santa Margarita is one of the potential buyers of the water, as is the Jurupa Community Services District in Riverside County and five other agencies as far north as San Jose.

Critics accuse Cadiz of overestimating the amount of natural water — such as rain — that will seep into the ground and replenish the aquifer. They also say the operation will drain the desert's precious water supply in the area between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve.

Proponents say the project will spur economic growth by bringing a new source of water to a state plagued by drought.

Still at issue is a right-of-way application for a pipeline that would cross public land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. A federal review may be required.

Cadiz water project offers many benefits

Guest Commentary

By Scott Slater
San Bernardino Sun

While it is a common tactic for project opponents to distort facts and instill fear, everyone should be disappointed in recent a guest commentary by Bill Withuhn, which attacks the Cadiz Water Project and its railroad-related benefits.

Withuhn is a railroad professional, yet in his piece, he denies historical fact: Steam locomotives are firmly embedded in the history of the Mojave — not “an overheated absurdity.” Towns like Cadiz were founded by railroads as water stops for steam locomotives carrying passengers and supplies across the desert during the expansion of the West. Appreciation for steam trains carries on here today, so plans to integrate a steam train into our project are based on certainty that “if we build it they will come.”

After all, the planned steam locomotive route between Cadiz and Parker, Ariz., is centrally located to the desert’s most frequented destinations. Parker receives 750,000 visitors per year, Joshua Tree National Park has nearly two times that many, and annual visitor spending in the California deserts is $5.8 billion.

The truth fared even worse when the piece turned its attention to the water supply reliability Cadiz will offer. The project will capture and conserve groundwater that is being lost to evaporation from a vast Mojave Desert aquifer system, providing a new supply for 400,000 water users across Southern California. Because the piece aims to further the “us vs. them” fears worked up by project opponents, it stokes the familiar but false claim that Cadiz would only serve the Coast. In fact, 20 percent of project water is reserved for San Bernardino County and these local benefits cannot be denied, with Northern California and Colorado River water supplies becoming increasingly unreliable.

The piece also repeats the unfounded claim that the project has avoided environmental review. In fact, it was thoroughly reviewed under the nation’s toughest environmental law — the California Environmental Quality Act. A 6,000-page environmental impact report (EIR) found it would have no significant impacts on desert flora, fauna, water users or businesses, leading to project approval by two public agencies including San Bernardino County.

The commentary also omits that the county adopted a groundwater management plan to ensure the project’s pumping is sustainable. The plan requires data from 100 new groundwater monitoring installations be published online for public review, and gives the county independent power to shut the project down if any unexpected impact occurs.

It appears the article’s true intent is to shop for a second opinion on the project from D.C. regulators. That explains why it mischaracterizes our plans to place the project’s water conveyance pipeline within an active railroad right-of-way in order to avoid impacts to desert lands. It is commonplace in the Mojave and nationwide for railroads to lease their property to third parties for uses like water, fiber optic, gas and oil pipelines. Federal regulators have allowed railroads to do this with without their involvement. And it undeniably serves the public’s interest to tuck such infrastructure into already disturbed routes.

The project also will provide benefits to the host railroad that cannot be dismissed, including fire suppression. According to a 2013 California Public Utilities Commission report, increased crude oil movement by rail is a significant concern in the railroad industry today. Withuhn is no doubt aware of the exponential increase in movement of crude oil by railcar and the related fire risk along rail corridors, as evidenced by the 2013 oil train derailment in Canada that killed 47 people. Cadiz’s offer to provide water for remote-controlled fire suppression systems on the railroad’s wooden trestles is an investment that a railroad expert should applaud, not dismiss.

The Cadiz project was publicly reviewed and approved under the toughest environmental law, will be locally enforced and provide long-term benefits to the desert and railroad communities. To imply otherwise is the only “overheated absurdity.”

Scott Slater is president and CEO of Cadiz, Inc.

Mojave region’s public being railroaded

OPINION

By Bill Withuhn
San Bernardino Sun

You want your scarce groundwater sent to Orange County and L.A.? Read on.

It’s not a desert mirage: A proposed water project stands to create irreversible damage by pumping groundwater from underneath the Mojave Desert and sending it in a new pipeline to supply the Los Angeles/Orange County region. Project proponent Cadiz Inc. has requested the Interior Department waive standard federal review.

People in desert country might applaud waiving a federal law — at first. But the Cadiz Inc. project threatens desert residents, ranchers and local businesses by putting their groundwater in jeopardy. The project would also threaten the National Chloride Company’s brine mining operation. According to a local economist, pipeline construction might benefit San Bernardino County employment, but for just four years. Here then and then gone.

The project would pump 50,000 acre-feet of water annually from the Mojave Aquifer for 50 years. Starting near the town of Cadiz, the proposed pipeline would use the right-of-way of an existing railroad for about 45 miles till reaching the Colorado River Aqueduct near Freda.

Cadiz Inc. calls the pipeline a “railroad” project rather than a water project. Really?

This sleight of hand is bizarre. Cadiz Inc. wants to piggyback on a law that helps California businesses that use freight rail. Under that law, a railroad through public lands can undertake improvements within its established right-of-way without federal review.

The claims by Cadiz are a gross distortion. Its project would irreversibly harm public lands that taxpayers have paid for decades to protect. That includes state wilderness areas and the Mojave National Preserve — the third-largest national park site in the lower 48 states. Threatened are desert springs and many rare desert species, not to mention the livelihoods of local ranchers and business owners who never use the railroad. Cadiz foresees a $1-2 billion profit over a half-century, by pumping the Mojave Aquifer into overdraft.

In 2011, the Interior Department published a review concluding that a railroad’s authority to undertake activities impacting public land is limited to projects directly affecting rail transportation.

In its attempt to claim its project furthers a “railroad purpose,” Cadiz modified its proposal to install dozens of water hydrants all along the 45 miles of track for emergencies, construct a parallel access road, and provide water for weed control and “washing rail cars.”

A suitable road along the railway already exists — a public road, also used for rail safety inspections and access for track work. Water for mixing with approved weedkiller is a minor use limited to inside the railroad’s right-of-way (so no help with tumbleweeds), and only modestly useful in desert lands. Washing rail freight cars is, frankly, absurd. Nearly all freight cars transiting the line are owned and maintained by other railroads or companies.

Fire hydrants all along a remote rail line are also absurd. They have no justification for safety and have nothing to do with a “railroad purpose.” U.S. DOT’s Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) verifies that except within large railyards, no known railroad has strings of hydrants along its enroute lines. Diesel locomotives don’t need water added during trips, and firefighting or quick emergency response is done best by vehicles coming by the existing road. San Bernardino County’s fire department says the road is sufficient for the department’s rapid-response needs.

In its latest effort to mask its water-export project, Cadiz announced plans for a steam-powered tourist train, using Mojave Aquifer water. A steam engine running in this region is a further overheated absurdity.

Cadiz is unaware of the economics. From my direct experience of 40-plus years, safely maintaining a steam locomotive is about 20 times more expensive than even a 30-year-old diesel. The proposed route is extremely remote, without an adequate rail tourism market present or future. Steam trains tried in scarce-population areas have rapidly proven nonviable. That’s due to huge unavoidable costs and few paying tourist passengers to cover the bills. Cadiz proposes a cute steam excursion to burn money by the trainload.

The Interior Department owes to all Americans a review of high-risk water projects, so impacts can be vetted by those without stakes in the matter and vetted also by the affected public in the light of day.

Bill Withuhn is a former managing vice president of diesel freight-rail lines in five states. For operational steam engines, he served four years as co-chair of a U.S. DOT special committee developing today’s stricter safety standards, which have also cut operating costs. He lives in Camanche Lake, Calif.

Cadiz Water Project: Reader Rebuttal

READER REBUTTAL

By Robert S. Bower
Contributing Writer

A Register editorial opines the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project should go forward because Southern California needs water [“Drier than we have to be,” March 10]. Unfortunately, that view is based on misinformation and an “ends justify the means” mentality.

First, the misinformation. The project will not “store” imported water. Nor will it “conserve” groundwater – it will pump groundwater at a rate well in excess of the rate at which the aquifer is recharged, without any replenishment requirement. At the assumed recharge rate, Cadiz will overdraft the aquifer by 18,000-to-43,000 acre-feet, every year for 50 years. Once pumping starts, the aquifer will not recover for 117 years; if recharge is lower than assumed, recovery could take 440 years.

As for justification, the editorial claims Cadiz did its due diligence, and the only impediments to the project are those pesky lawsuits challenging the environmental impact report under “oppressive CEQA rules.” As a California Environmental Quality Act practitioner who usually defends EIRs, I am aware CEQA is sometimes used for political purposes. Here, however, it was Cadiz who gamed the system.

CEQA requires that the public agency with principal responsibility for approving the project act as lead agency, because the lead agency determines the EIR's scope and whether the project will proceed. The only agency with regulatory authority over the project was the county of San Bernardino, which had to approve a groundwater plan before Cadiz could pump groundwater.

Cadiz, however, orchestrated events so that Santa Margarita Water District was lead agency rather than San Bernardino County. SMWD's only approval was of its agreement with Cadiz concerning its purchase of project water.

A primary purpose of CEQA is to make elected officials accountable to their constituents. SMWD is located 225 miles away from the project, and virtually all project impacts will occur in San Bernardino County. Cadiz's maneuvering stripped away all accountability because SMWD's elected decision-makers are not accountable to voters in San Bernardino County.

The project should proceed only if the EIR complied with CEQA, not simply because we need water. It is a slippery slope when decisions are justified on the Machiavellian notion that the ends justify the means.

Robert S. Bower is counsel for Delaware Tetra Technologies Inc., which opposes the Cadiz Project.

State drier than we have to be

Water recovery project could ease drought.

OPINION
Orange County Register

Despite the recent heavy rain, California’s water situation remains dire. Data from the U.S. Drought Monitor, a partnership between the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, shows that 100 percent of California is “abnormally dry.”

It is the worst drought the state has seen in decades and is tapping our water resources to their limits, and, for many, beyond. Water agencies in some of the hardest-hit regions of the state are expecting to be without water by the summer.

It’s why Gov. Jerry Brown promised to do, “everything that is humanly possible to allow for a flexible use of California’s water sources.”

But the state still seems bent on pushing ahead with water policies that appear to make the drought artificially worse, from the New Deal-style public-works Bay Delta Conservation Plan boondoggle that seeks to upend the Sacramento Delta for dubious water supplies and the benefit of a bait fish, the Delta smelt, to projects closer to home.

Projects like the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, meant to capture groundwater from a basin within a 1,300-square-mile watershed in San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert.

The company argues that pumping out 50,000 acre-feet of water per year from under the desert, which would otherwise largely evaporate, would save Southern California $6.1 billion over a 50-year period and could provide 100,000 Southern California families, in six counties, another supply of water every year.

But, environmental groups, and a Texas-based oil company with a nearby strip-mining facility, continue to fight the Cadiz project through the courts using the state’s oppressive CEQA rules.

Nearby ranchers worry the pumping stations could deplete their wells and environmental groups say the water would be pumped out faster than it could be replenished. While these issues should be taken seriously, as it would be preferable to not deplete a new water supply as fast as it’s tapped, they have largely been mitigated by the process.

Because San Bernardino County is requiring even more stringent rules than came out of the two-year CEQA process. Requiring the company to track its operations, and if the water level is reduced 80 feet below the current water table, within a 2-mile radius of the project center, the project would be halted. Independent and final authority to enforce that rule rests with the county.

In all, four municipal agencies and two private utilities have signed on to the project, including some agencies that reside in southern Orange County. The project developers seem to have done their due diligence and efforts to expand and diversify water sources for residents of the Southland, which this project appears to do, is something these editorial pages have long supported. The government-created barriers to tapping water sources like this must change and this project be allowed to go forward undeterred.

California Looks to the Desert as Cadiz Proposes Tapping Aquifer

Irrigation sprinklers at Cadiz Ranch in the Mojave Desert for a planned lemon grove. They will use water from an underground aquifer (John Francis Peters)

By Peter Waldman
Bloomberg

California is parched. The state’s worst drought in decades has left its reservoirs half-naked, if not skeletal. Officials say 17 communities could run out of drinking water this summer; some are considering mandatory rationing; and 500,000 acres in the state may be left fallow.

For the first time in its 54-year history, the California State Water Project -- the world’s biggest plumbing network and the way millions of state residents get hundreds of billions of gallons of water -- is essentially shutting down. In 2012 the project moved 815 billion gallons of fresh water from Northern California’s rivers to 25 million people and a million acres of farmland in the arid central and southern parts of the state. Last year, the driest on record, the system delivered 490 billion gallons, down 40 percent. This year, the planned water distribution is zero.

Two-thirds of California’s 38 million people and most of its $45 billion farm products depend on snow-melt from the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain watersheds, imported via thousands of miles of pipelines, canals, and the Colorado River. Although snowfall is up this winter in the Rockies, precipitation in both mountain watersheds has been going down over the last 14 years, raising scary questions for the nation’s most populous state: What if drought is the new normal? Where will California find the water it needs?

Scott Slater is convinced the solution lies underneath the Mojave Desert, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its March 10 issue. His company, Cadiz Inc. (CDZI), wants to tap an aquifer beneath 34,000 acres of the eastern Mojave and sell the water to suburbs and subdivisions in the Los Angeles Basin.

Sole Mission

Cadiz, whose only mission is to sell the desert water, has teamed up with a public water agency in southern Orange County in an audacious proposal to pump 16.3 billion gallons a year toward the coast. Some of it will flow 200 miles from the aquifer. The water will travel through a 43-mile pipeline that Cadiz wants to build along a railroad spur, then merge into the Colorado River Aqueduct into Los Angeles.

Several politicians, ranchers, and environmentalists call Cadiz’s proposal ludicrous. “How can a private company come out here and drain an entire basin of its groundwater for L.A.?” asks Ruth Musser-Lopez, an archaeologist in the Mojave town of Needles, Calif., 60 miles east of Cadiz’s land. “That took thousands of years to seep down from the mountains. Water is just way too precious in the desert to let them take it away.”

Some potential beneficiaries of the plan are skeptical, too. “To take that water from the desert and use it to fill Mission Viejo’s lakes? It’s absurd,” says Debbie Cook, the former mayor of Huntington Beach, Calif.

Shares Jump

Yet things have gotten dire enough that some Californians are ready to listen. During the week Governor Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency on Jan. 17, Cadiz’s stock price jumped 23 percent, closing at $8.61 a share on Jan. 21, a 15-month high. Slater, a water lawyer who was named Cadiz’s chief executive officer last April, already has the necessary permit to pump from San Bernardino County, where the aquifer is located. He also has six utilities in the Los Angeles area eager to buy the desert water.

“The state needs projects like this,” says Slater, 56. Tall and lanky with gray-specked blonde hair, he sits in the company’s 28th-floor headquarters overlooking downtown L.A. Prior to coming to Cadiz, Slater spent almost a decade representing the San Diego County Water Authority in the biggest farm-to-urban water transfer in U.S. history. He’s written a two-volume textbook on California water law and has litigated some of the state’s biggest water fights in recent years. In addition to running Cadiz, he remains a partner at Denver-based firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck LLP.

Wanted Molecules

Slater’s confident his plan can work. “I want those molecules,” he says. “We’ve harmonized uses in a way that’s balanced and makes sense. This is an environmentally benign project that will help California overcome systemic water shortages.” Cadiz hasn’t earned a profit in 24 years and has yet to sell water. But it’s been even longer since California had a drought like this.

Cadiz was founded in 1983 by British impresario Keith Brackpool and Mark Liggett, a mining geologist. They were looking for water sources that could be developed for farming and sale to California’s burgeoning cities, says Timothy Shaheen, Cadiz’s chief financial officer. After studying NASA images from space, Liggett persuaded Brackpool that the Fenner Gap, in the eastern Mojave, was the right spot.

Railroad Hamlet

Fenner Gap, where the aquifer lies, sits on the confluence of three watersheds spanning four desert mountain ranges. Cadiz bought a patchwork of plots from the railroads, amassing 34,000 acres in the Cadiz and Fenner valleys, plus 11,000 elsewhere in the Mojave. Cadiz took its name from the old railroad hamlet and valley just south of Fenner Gap, where an old Santa Fe railroad spur breaks southeast toward Parker, Arizona, and on to Phoenix. Santa Fe tankers used to supply fresh water from Cadiz Valley wells to silver, talc, and limestone mines in the area.

The company planted about 600 acres of grapes and citrus but had trouble making money, largely because of the expense of diesel to power the irrigation pumps, Shaheen says. The sole purpose became selling water. What Cadiz lacked in lemons, it made up for in juice. Spending personal money and cash raised from investors and lenders, Brackpool and Cadiz became big campaign contributors in California, giving to candidates in both parties, particularly former Governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Politicians Employed

At various times, Brackpool hired Antonio Villaraigosa, a former state assembly speaker and L.A. mayor; Bruce Babbitt, a former U.S. secretary of the Interior; and Susan Kennedy, ex-chief of staff for Schwarzenegger. Former Democratic U.S. Representative Tony Coelho served on Cadiz’s board.

Cadiz declined to make Brackpool, also 56, available for an interview. He remains chairman after ceding the CEO post to Slater and taking a 31 percent cut in base pay, to $275,000 a year. He keeps racehorses in the U.S. and England and owns the Manhattan Country Club in Manhattan Beach. Brackpool was named chairman of the California Horse Racing Board by Schwarzenegger in 2010 and last year became CEO of the Santa Anita racetrack. Liggett is retired from Cadiz.

The company’s last major water transport plan, conceived in the mid-1990s, called for storing excess Colorado River water under Cadiz lands, then selling it to coastal communities during droughts.

Met’s Decision

Cadiz stood to make as much as $20 million a year in revenue from the deal, which it pitched to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. Known simply as the Met, the public agency based in Los Angeles distributed about 554 billion gallons of water to 19 million residents in Southern California last year, most of it imported from the State Water Project in Northern California and the Colorado River. After six years of development and controversy, the Met killed Cadiz’s Colorado storage plan in 2002.

In the aftermath of the decision, Cadiz’s stock tanked, but the company still paid Brackpool a $233,000 bonus in 2002, on top of his $500,000 salary. Lenders and investors covered the company’s losses from 2003 through 2012 with multiple cash infusions, lured by the prospect of pumping water someday to L.A. Meanwhile, Brackpool received $14.4 million from Cadiz in salary and stock over the 10-year period, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

“I always wondered if this wasn’t some sort of Ponzi scheme,” says Cook, the former Huntington Beach mayor. She says she couldn’t understand why Brackpool was paid so well for an incomplete project at an unprofitable company.

‘Regulated, Audited’

Cadiz Vice President Courtney Degener strongly objects to Cook’s musings, writing in an e-mail that Cadiz is “a regulated, audited, publicly traded company” and “information that unequivocally demonstrates that Cadiz is not a Ponzi scheme is readily available.” Degener defended Brackpool’s compensation as shareholder-approved and consistent with the long-term nature of the development.

In 2008, Slater, who had just joined Cadiz as general counsel, began repitching the company as a fresh water supplier. Because there’s no excess flow in the Colorado any longer, he put off the storage component and rebranded, without irony, Cadiz’s plan to pump the desert aquifer as a “conservation, recovery and storage project.” Wells on the property will suck water from the underground rock formations and pump it through the 43-mile pipeline before it merges into the Met’s aqueduct carrying Colorado River water from Arizona to the Los Angeles Basin.

Conservation Pumping

Slater says he wants to “conserve” the desert aquifer by pumping water out at a rate that’s more than 50 percent faster than the aquifer naturally replenishes. As a result, the water table, or the level below the ground where the water lies, would drop as much as 80 feet.

That may not sound like conservation, but Cadiz consultants say pumping out the “temporary surplus” will reverse the aquifer’s natural underground flow, keeping the water from migrating into a pair of nearby dry lakes, where it would evaporate. “Under state law, evaporation is waste. It’s called ‘unreasonable use,’” says Slater. “You don’t let water leave the system if you can harvest it.”

The Santa Margarita Water District in southern Orange County, Cadiz’s partner in the project, wants to use some of that harvested water. Right now the area’s water comes entirely from the Met, says Dan Ferons, the agency’s general manager. Santa Margarita plans to co-develop the desert aquifer to reduce its dependence on the Met by “diversifying our portfolio,” Ferons says. Cadiz has agreed to pay almost all development costs. The desert water isn’t meant to facilitate new real estate projects; all planned expansion in the district has already been accounted for, he says.

‘Paper Water’

Slater says the desert water bonanza won’t feed unsustainable growth around L.A., but history suggests otherwise. In a 2009 report called “Paper Water,” Orange County’s civil grand jury lambasted Santa Margarita’s water planning. California law requires real estate projects with 500 or more units to get a “water supply assessment” from a water provider assuring it can service the new development. Santa Margarita’s 2003 assessment for a 14,000-unit development called Rancho Mission Viejo was “based on a series of assumptions” about water availability “that have long since been superseded” by drought and other changes, wrote the citizens’ watchdog group empaneled by the county. Rancho Mission Viejo is moving forward, while other proposals to build a toll road and housing on the county’s southern coast remain held up by regulators.

Growth Questioned

“The desert aquifer is tied to growth on the southern coast. Why else would a small Orange County water agency do a project in the middle of the desert?” says Conner Everts of the Southern California Watershed Alliance. “We call these ‘zombie water projects’ -- projects that come back to life when people worry about drought. At some point California is going to have to make water a much more serious part of land-use decisions.”

Past droughts have produced zombie proposals such as bringing icebergs from Alaska by barge and towing acre-size plastic bags filled with water from Northern California rivers. This time around critics are sneering at Governor Brown’s $15 billion plan to bore a pair of 30-mile tunnels east of Sacramento to channel Sierra Nevada runoff to critical agricultural land. The Poseidon desalinization proposal for northern Orange County, an area with plentiful groundwater and a successful water reuse program, also draws ridicule from Everts and other environmentalists, who say desalting seawater is expensive and emits greenhouse gases. “It’s like Cadiz. These things just don’t die,” he says.

Rancher’s Springs

In the Mojave National Preserve above Fenner Gap, cowboy-poet Rob Blair, 57, has been running cattle on about 400,000 acres of federal land since childhood. Five generations of his family have lived in the same house on the 7IL Ranch, the last ranchers left in the preserve. His dad, 87, still lives there; so does his son, Cody, 22, who helps run the ranch.

Blair is worried that although Fenner Gap is about 40 miles away and 1,000 feet below the ranch, pumping the aquifer could dry up the springs in the preserve that sustain his 400 cattle. The National Park Service, in written comments on the Cadiz project in 2012, said it’s “likely” some springs in the preserve are connected to the aquifer, a claim that Slater says makes no scientific sense. The Park Service also said Cadiz’s contention that the aquifer refills at the rate of about 30,000 acre-feet of water a year is “not reasonable and should not even be considered.”

‘No Margin’

Blair has seen it take three years for storm runoff in the distant Providence Mountains to reach some of his wells. “There’s no margin for error,” he says. “If they start pumping and our water drops, I go out of business. They got no business taking our water to waste on lawns and sidewalks and swimming pools.”

Blair’s ranch and the Mojave National Preserve are protected by strict limits mandated by San Bernardino County in permitting Cadiz’s pumping plan, says Christian Marsh, the county’s special counsel. The county signed off on the Cadiz project after extensive due diligence and only when Cadiz agreed to monitor its pumping’s impact on springs and wells throughout the area, says Marsh. If the water table drops below 80 feet, all pumping must stop. “The only way you’ll know how the system reacts is to start pumping,” he says.

Blair is unconvinced. “Once they start pumping, it isn’t coming back.”

Customer-Led Review

Slater says he’s hoping Cadiz will clear another hurdle in a few weeks, when a state judge in Orange County rules on whether it was appropriate for Santa Margarita, the project’s co-developer and water customer, to lead the environmental review, rather than San Bernardino County, where the impacts will occur.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, who authored the bill that created the Mojave National Preserve in 1994 and sees the Cadiz pumps as a threat to one of her signature achievements, is keeping a close eye on the company. In January, the Democrat inserted a rider into a budget bill that bars the Department of the Interior from spending any money this fiscal year on reviewing the project for permits. “Severely drawing down the aquifer could damage that region of the Mojave Desert beyond repair,” she wrote in an e-mail. “The bottom line is that right now we need more responsibility in how we use our water, not less.”

Slater says he can be patient: “My 8-year-old son told me sometimes being cool means doing unpopular things.”