In “A Flood of Regulations Threatens to Leave California Dry” (Cross Country, June 1), Allysia Finley misinterprets the facts surrounding Cadiz’s plan to drain a vital Mojave Desert aquifer for profit. Cadiz wants to draw up to 50,000 acre-feet of water a year from the aquifer. However, it falsely claims the aquifer’s natural recharge rate is 32,000 acre-feet a year to justify withdrawing that much water.
The California Senate passed a bill Tuesday that would require additional environmental review for groundwater transfers that would affect desert areas, which would put a major roadblock in front of a controversial water project proposed in the Mojave Desert by Cadiz Inc. The company has been trying to pump 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater out of the desert’s aquifer and transport it to the Colorado River Aqueduct.
As 2018 was winding down, one of California’s leading newspapers suggested, via a front-page, banner-headlined article, that the drought that had plagued the state for much of this decade may be returning. Just weeks later, that same newspaper was reporting that record-level midwinter storms were choking mountain passes with snow, rapidly filling reservoirs and causing serious local flooding. Neither was incorrect at the time, but their juxtaposition underscores the unpredictable nature of California’s water supply. The fickleness of nature has been compounded by a decades-long, multi-front struggle among hundreds of water agencies and other interested parties over allocations of the precious liquid, not unlike the perpetual religious and ethnic wars that consumed medieval Europe.
A bill that could block a Los Angeles-based water supply company from pumping water out of a Mojave Desert aquifer passed through the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, extending the yearslong fight over whether the environmental impact of groundwater extraction merits additional scrutiny. The entire State Senate will vote on S.B. 307 later in the legislative session and, if it passes, it will need to also be approved by the State Assembly and signed by the governor. The bill would impose additional environmental review requirements on Cadiz Inc.’s water project, which would pump 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater out of an aquifer and transport it across public lands to the Colorado River Aqueduct. Cadiz projects the project could make them $2.4 billion.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday ordered key state agencies to develop a blueprint for meeting California’s 21st-century water needs in the face of climate change. The executive order includes few details and doesn’t appear to set a dramatic new water course for the state. Rather, it reaffirms Newsom’s intentions to downsize the controversial twin tunnels project in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, use voluntary agreements to meet new river flow requirements and provide clean drinking water to impoverished communities. The directive calls for the Natural Resources Agency, Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Food and Agriculture to assess water demands and the impacts of climate change on California’s far-flung water system.
Water supply is clearly the most important long-term issue affecting California’s future. It’s also the most politically complicated. Incremental changes in California water policy typically take years, if not decades, to work their way through seemingly infinite legal, regulatory and political processes at federal, state and local levels — and the conflicts often are over the processes themselves.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, stepping up the Trump administration’s attack on California water policy, on Friday issued a memo to his staff demanding a “plan of action” to circumvent state officials. He gave the staff 15 days to develop a proposal and present it to his deputy, a former lobbyist for big water users at odds with the state. Zinke’s memo represents the latest volley in a developing war between the Trump administration and the state over the distribution of water from state and federal projects.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
