Draining the Desert

Friday, May 18, 2012

Page 15

SNIPPETS (Column)

Draining the Desert

By MARC HAEFELE

I see from Wednesday’s Times that the Cadiz, Inc. Mojave Desert water project scheme is back in play. You have to give its promoters credits for endurance and patience. They’ve been holding on to their 50 square miles of Mojave desert vineyards and orchards for 30 years now, waiting fore a big break. This nearly came a decade ago, when the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the region’s biggest water wholesaler, almost cut a deal with Cadiz to buy the water lying under that land for its client cities.

At issue was a sudden need for lots of new water due to a federal deadline requiring California to reduce its use of the Colorado River. Cadiz’ San Bernardino properties are located close enough to the MWD’s Colorado River Aqueduct to make Cadiz’ aquifer a feasible replacement source. All sort of objections were raised, from the likely effect of the drawdown on the surface oases that sustained the big-horn sheep and other wild life, to the plausible effects of the water drain on the ailing Salton Sea.

The proposal also won the opposition of mighty U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Which didn’t help. So the original Cadiz plan did not happen. The needed extra water came from elsewhere.

Now Cadiz has another plan, reportedly less dependent on statewide political approval. According to the Times, this time it will try to sell most of its water to a half a dozen local Southern California water utilities—three of them said to be private. Cadiz even claims it can legally, without government approval, move the water through a pipeline alongside a rail right of way it can access to the MWD’s aqueduct .

The key objection is that very probably (no one seems to know for sure) the vast water supply that Cadiz is trying to sell is not a self-renewing resource as it claims. That it probably amounts to a huge fossil water deposit that is likely to be depleted faster than the annual spring snow melt and rain that falls on the aquifer’s surrounding catchment area (largely federally owned) can replenish it. Perhaps much faster. Cadiz insists this is not so, but clearly, they are acting on the opposite assumption.

Which is why we are talking about a 50-year deal here. As though Cadiz’ people knew very well they were peddling a vanishing resource.

With what outcome, you might ask? The figure given is the water could supply water for 100,000 new homes—say 400,000 more people in our arid climate. A third of a million people dependent on a resource that is going to disappear. Where will their water come from in the middle of this century? When Cadiz is dry, and other regional sources, like the Colorado River, are certain to be curtailed far more? The new Cadiz proposal is the equivalent of spending your savings account on an unsustainable life style. When it’s empty, you are left flat.

There is a more subtle problem here too. Projects like Cadiz’s divert our water agencies from their acknowledged and pressing need to conserve and eventually recycle what present water resources we do have. As mentioned here before, since 2001, two consecutive Los Angeles mayors have virtually frozen progress on water recycling in the state’s largest city. Meanwhile, Angeleno water use went up three percent per capita over the past year. And even if the state’s population growth has slowed lately, it is still growing. Meaning more lawns, more pools, more water demand.

But there should be no short-term answers to this demand. And that is what Cadiz’ plan is.