The recent election may have changed the dynamic in Washington, but the facts on the ground in the California desert remain the same: The Cadiz water mining project poses a grave threat to the California desert and should not be approved. Covering about 35,000 acres of prime desert land, the project sits in the heart of the new Mojave Trails National Monument, described by President Obama as an area that “exemplifies the remarkable ecology of the Mojave Desert, where the hearty insistence of life is scratched out from unrelenting heat and dryness.”