Pumping
Water
from the
Mojave
Desert
Aquifer
to WHERE?
by
Frank Arundel
 |
Cadiz, Inc. a California Corporation is going to pump the Mojave ground water aquifer dry, selling 2 million acre-feet of that water to the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) over a 50 years stretch.
Keith Brackpool, the president of Cadiz is the man behind this project. His company stands to make approximately $500 million from the construction and operation of the project.
He plans to build a 35-mile pipeline from the Iron Mountain pumping plant on the Colorado river aqueduct and pump it to the Mojave desert. Build 390 acres of "spreading basins" for percolation of Colorado river water into the ground water basin in the desert. Then build a well field for pumping indigenous ground water to the MWD and it’s Southern California customers.
This operation would include storage of a minimum of 1 million acre-feet of Colorado river water, storage or extraction of approximately 150,000 acre-feet per year and the transfer of up to 2 million acre-feet of indigenous ground water depending on the natural recharge of the ground water basin over the 50-year term of the deal.
The joke is Brackpool then plans to "replace" the water he’s pumped out of the desert aquifer with water from the Colorado river.
What will the MWD use the water for? To increase population growth in Southern California. There have been no other sites suggested for additional water or other ideas that address future water needs. There has been no mention of conservation measures in the MWD’s service area that would reduce consumption that would eliminate or lessen the need to extract indigenous ground water like the Mojave desert aquifer.
What is the impact on the desert where this water is coming from? It will dry up springs and seeps and turn the desert into a dust bowl, destroying endangered species and the whole ecosystem.
The Mojave National Preserve which is a unit of the National Park Service is located approximately 15 miles north of the main project area and shares at least one key ground water basin with the Cadiz project. Fenner Basin, which is expected to provide the primary source of natural recharge ground water to the Cadiz project, runs nearly 30 miles into the Mojave National Preserve and is one of the park’s major ground water recourses.
There are four national wilderness areas established by the California Desert Protection Act of 1994 that are located in close proximity to the main project area: Cadiz Dunes Wilderness Area, Old Woman Mountains Wilderness Area, Clipper Mountains Wilderness Area, and Trilobite Wilderness Area. These wilderness areas are designated for special preservation pursuant to the Wilderness Preservation Act, due in part to their "unique" and "inestimable" "wildlife" and "ecological" values.
These lands contain designated critical habitat for the Mojave Desert Population of the Desert Tortoise, which is listed as threatened.
And the hook.... the water that Brackpool is suppose to pump back into the aquifer is contaminated. The Safe Drinking Water Act regulates underground injections of pollutants to ensure that they do not endanger drinking water sources. The Colorado river water that Cadiz will inject into the aquifer is contaminated because it is very saline and contains twice the level perchlorate considered safe for human consumption.
So how is this happening? In 1999, the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California and the United States Bureau of Land Management published notices of intent to prepare a joint Environmental Impact Report under the California Environmental Quality Act and Environmental Impact Statement under the National Environmental Policy Act for the proposed Cadiz Project.
The MWB and the BLM held hearings and received comments regarding issues that should have been addressed in a report they created. They took comments on the report for the 90 days. The United States National Park Service, the United States Geological Survey, the County of San Bernardino, the National Parks Conservation Association and the Sierra Club ALL concluded that the report was unsound and said that the entire report was patently inadequate. These agencies and organizations demanded that the BLM and the MWD prepare a new draft report on a proper analytic foundation and issue it for public comment. The BLM and MWD agreed to do so, and since the spring of 2000 have been preparing a supplemental draft for the project.
After this report is done, probably at the end of September, 2000, there will be public hearings to receive oral comments from interested parties. Organizations and individuals that have an interest in commenting on the report and offer opposition to the project should show up at the hearings.
Once the period for public comment is closed, the MWB and the BLM have an open-ended amount of time to review all the comments, conduct any further investigation or analysis they deem necessary, and issue their final report. Their final report should come out in the spring of 2001.
At that point it probably will be in the hands of lawyers and it will start costing money to fight this, mad, out of control, potential ecological disaster. It could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and that is the shame of our system.
Society is going to have to expend great time, energy and money to stop something that shouldn’t have been started in the first place. This came about because of a political system that was greased by money from the hands of Keith Brackpool into the hands of high ranking political office holders who wrote loop-holes in a water bond issue that we as citizens of this state past last year.
Keith Brackpool, the president of Cadiz, Inc., was appointed to the State Water Board by Governor Davis and has been a close advisor to the governor on of all things....water issues.
If you would like to know more about this subject, go to www.axelsabyss.com. There’s a lot more information about how this happened and if you would like to help, please fill out the form that is included on the site.
Frank Arundel is a retired graphic designer, public access advocate, union, civil rights and political activist, supporter of the first amendment, painter, photographer, animator, public access video producer and dish washer.