CADIZ, a foreign company who privatizes water projects worldwide, worked with local officials to hold the mandated public hearings 100 miles away so no one would show up. It’s all about corporate profits……water is a right and owned by everyone.
https://www.wired.com/2016/01/the-2-4-billion-plan-to-water-la-by-draining-the-mojave/
https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/insight/water-privatization-facts-and-figures
Activists sue in water project
Groups aim to block plan to pump from Mojave Desert
http://santarosapressdemocrat.ca.newsmemory.com/?token=35b35726-f66c-40ff-b7a2-f59554094703
By
ASSOCIATED PRESS
LOS ANGELES — Environmental activists sued Tuesday to halt a plan to pump water from beneath the Mojave Desert and sell it to Southern California cities and counties.
The lawsuit takes aim at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for allowing Cadiz Inc. to build a 43-mile pipeline to transfer the water from its desert wells into the Colorado River Aqueduct so it can be sold to water districts.
The BLM released guidelines during the Obama administration to block construction of the pipeline along an existing federal railroad right of way, but the Trump administration reversed them this year and the project is on a priority infrastructure list.
The lawsuit says the new guidelines would illegally permit construction of the pipeline on public land, including the newly created Mojave Trails National Monument, “while circumventing laws enacted to protect human health and the environment.”
According to the suit, Cadiz could draw perhaps billions of gallons of water from fragile desert aquifers — far more than could be replenished naturally — and that would dry up streams that are important for plants and wildlife and create dry lakebeds that would produce windblown dust pollution.
The suit also contends that the underground water contains a cancer-causing chemical and other toxins, such as mercury.
“The Cadiz project will suck the desert dry while developers count their money,” said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which filed the suit along with the Center for Food Safety.
“It’s an unsustainable water-privatization scheme.”
The BLM had not reviewed the complaint and could not comment, spokeswoman Sarah Webster said in
a statement.
The BLM ruled in October that Cadiz could use the current railroad right of way rather than having to seek approval through a process that would include public comment and an environmental review, the suit said.