Thirsty Mojave knee-deep in water controversy

The Mojave Desert, home of diverse plants such as the pinon tree, is targeted for a project to supply water to suburban Southern California

By Environmental News Network staff

No history of the American West is complete without the storyline of a relentless human quest to control and appropriate nature's most precious resource: water.

A controversy now gurgling over the future of an aquifer in California's Mojave Desert has stirred those waters anew.

Cadiz Inc., an agricultural and water development company, is proposing to drain 652 billion gallons of pristine, fossil-age groundwater from private land it owns in a remote valley in the eastern Mojave. The company plans to sell the water at market value to the Metropolitan Water District, the region's largest wholesaler, which supplies water to nearly 17 million people in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Cadiz would allow the water district to store above the aquifer extra Colorado River water that is collected during high precipitation seasons. This extra water would be available for use in times of drought.

For years, millions of Californians have depended on the Colorado River to meet their water needs. But recently, other western states have argued for their share of the water.

One solution for Southern California to maximize its allotment of water from the Colorado River is to store it underground. But the state has never found the right place to do it.

According to Cadiz, the Mohave project could provide enough water to meet the annual water needs of about 80,000 families in San Bernardino County for the next 50 years, during which time the company stands to make $500 million.

"In its most simple form, the Cadiz Program is an insurance plan that will help California&'s largest water wholesaler counterbalance future drought conditions," the corporation said in a document posted on its web site.

Desert bighorn sheep would be impacted if the plan to divert water from the Mojave Desert is

Conservation groups contend the proposed water grab will exhaust the supply that is necessary to sustain the Mojave's fragile wildlife. They say the project is likely to effect a wide variety of desert plants and animals, including the threatened desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep and several species of migratory birds.

"It&'s essentially a water-mining project," said Steven Krefting, Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. "Numerous natural springs in the Mojave National Preserve and federal wilderness areas (surrounding the proposed project) may dry up, jeopardizing rare wildlife that depends on the scarce water. Such action destroys the very purpose of the park and wilderness areas."

A 1999 draft environmental impact statement on the proposal was rejected by the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Park Service and San Bernadino County. Concerns were raised that Cadiz would drain more water out of the ground than the amount that could be replenished by rain and snow runoff from nearby mountains.

In reviewing the 1999 report, the USGS found that Cadiz overestimated the amount of water the company could safely extract by almost 15 times.

A supplemental environmental impact statement mandated by the government agencies, released on Oct. 20, does not address previous flaws, environmentalists claim.

"One of the key issues is that we don't know the recharge rate of the water," Krefting said. "The entire question of the recharge rate is ignored entirely in the supplemental report. I think that is a fundamental question."

"The supplemental report relies on uncertain future plans to monitor and respond to the draining of the aquifer through a process that would effectively be controlled by the two parties that stand to financially gain from this project: Cadiz and the Metropolitan Water District," said Simeon Herskovits, an attorney for the Western Environmental Law Center. "In other words, the report does nothing more than paper over the real-world problems that this project will cause."

Environmentalists have also raised concerns that the project could turn the area into another Owens Valley, made famous by Marc Reisner's 1986 book, "Cadillac Desert."

There are two dry lakes in the Mojave that receive water from the aquifer. While the water usually remains below the ground, it keeps soil in the lake beds moist. "If the aquifer is drawn down far enough, the lakes could become permanently dry," Herskovitz explained. "This poses an enormous risk of dust pollution because you end up with loose sediment that used to be kept in place by moist soil."

When Los Angeles diverted water from Owens Lake, the results were disastrous for people and wildlife. The area is listed by The Environmental Protection Agency as one of the worst sources of pollution in the country. The city now spends $62 million a year to control air pollution caused by the Owen's Lake dust bowl, said Elden Hughes of the Sierra Club.

"The dust storms affect wildlife too," Hughes said. "No animal likes that sort of thing. When you do the math on the Cadiz plan to pump as much as 50 billion gallons of groundwater yearly, you see that they are likely to suck dry this aquifer that has supported desert life for millennia. When you realize that Cadiz stands to make half a billion dollars, you start to understand their zeal to move forward before the project can be checked by public scrutiny."

Copyright 2000, Environmental News Network, All Rights Reserved

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Mojave National Preserve
U.S. Geological Survey
Cadiz Inc. Metropolitan Water District

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