Thirsty California Needs Cadiz Water
(My Epoch Times article)
This is a thirsty state. Having recently survived the severe 2011-17 drought, California now is in the second year of a new drought that began in 2020. We need every drop we can get, from whatever source.
Yet efforts continue to prevent tapping a new source I have been writing about for a decade: the Cadiz Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project out in the Mojave Desert.
What is Cadiz? As the Santa Margarita Water District described it: “The Cadiz Water Project will provide a new Southern California water supply by actively managing a groundwater basin that is part of a 1,300-square-mile watershed in eastern San Bernardino County.
“Water that would otherwise evaporate will be collected and conserved for beneficial use. The project will then convey the conserved water to SMWD and to other Southern California water agencies to enhance their water supply reliability. A future phase of the project could include the ability to store water underground in the Cadiz aquifer so that it could be used during dry years….”
Clogging the System
Cadiz received all necessary federal and state approvals, including under both the Obama and Trump administrations. Unfortunately, it has run into increased opposition from two powerful sources that have opposed it for two decades: Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior Democratic senator, and Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times columnist.
In 2016, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana upheld six lower court decisions concerning the project and the environment, giving it a green light. Feinstein replied the decision “changes nothing.”
Wes May, executive director of the Engineering Contractors’ Association, replied to Feinstein in the Desert Sun: “[I]t must be clearly stated, the Cadiz Water Project has not ‘bypassed’ federal environmental review. There is no federal permitting nexus. Co-locating infrastructure in a railroad right of way is commonplace in the West and good public policy, but by no means an avoidance of review. … The [California Environmental Quality Act] review identified not one ‘devastating’ or ‘grave’ impact to the preserve or any other desert resource. Indeed, the project considered the concerns Sen. Feinstein raised years ago and it was carefully designed to purposely avoid any impacts.”
READ THE REST HERE
https://www.theepochtimes.com/thirsty-california-needs-cadiz-water_4168799.html