“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.”
UPDATE: Court throws out federal approval of Cadiz water pipeline
Bettina Boxall LA TIMES reporter
A federal judge has struck down Trump administration decisions that cleared the way for Cadiz Inc. to build a water pipeline across public land in the California desert.
The ruling is a blow to the company’s decades-long effort to pump groundwater from beneath its desert property 200 miles east of Los Angeles and sell it to urban Southern California.
Cadiz wants to use an existing railroad right of way across federal land to pipe supplies from its proposed well field to the Colorado River Aqueduct.
In 2015, during the Obama administration, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management said Cadiz couldn’t use the right of way and would therefore have to obtain federal permission to run the proposed pipeline across surrounding federal land.
That would trigger a lengthy environmental review that could impose new restrictions on the project, which is fiercely opposed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and desert conservationists.
After President Trump took office, a BLM official revoked legal guidances that underpinned the agency’s 2015 decision. The BLM subsequently gave Cadiz the green light to use the right of way.
Environmental groups challenged the agency’s about-face in court, winning a favorable ruling from U.S. District Judge George Wu.
In a decision released Friday, Wu faulted the BLM’s actions on two key counts.
The judge, who sits in the Central District of California, rejected the BLM’s argument that under 1875 railroad law, any use could be approved along a federal right of way as long as it did not interfere with the railroad. Courts have consistently found that right-of-way uses should further railroad purposes, Wu wrote.
He also found that the BLM had failed to legally justify its reversal: In 2015, the agency said the water pipeline would not further a railroad purpose and therefore couldn’t run along the right of way. Two years later, it concluded the opposite.
“The Court would hold that the BLM had the duty to provide a reasoned explanation for why it disregarded certain facts from the 2015 Determination in its conclusion that the component parts of the Cadiz Pipeline furthered railroad purposes. Because the 2017 Determination provided no explanation for reversal, the Court would find it arbitrary and capricious,” the ruling says.
Full Story here
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.