Smell something? It’s Cadiz, Inc
Posted on | June 11, 2009 | No Comments
PULITZER PRIZE-winning columnist Michael Hiltzik is one of a formidable team of Los Angeles Times reporters, including Frank Clifford, Tony Perry, Bettina Boxall and Duke Helfand, who have been all over the Cadiz, Inc ground water mining wheeze for the last ten years. Today, Hiltzik is back in the Times doing what he does best: Calling a stinker a stinker.
From his report:
People who say that nothing’s harder to get rid of than a bad penny must never have met Keith Brackpool.
The British-born promoter, who has spent the last dozen years pushing a scheme to pump water to Southern California from beneath 35,000 acres his Cadiz Inc. owns in the Mojave Desert, just won’t go away.
On the contrary, he continues to attract political sycophants happy to attest to his wisdom in the ways of water policy — while they accept campaign contributions and consulting fees from him and his company.
In the past his posse has included ex-Gov. Gray Davis and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Now he has added Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who last week publicly endorsed the scheme as “a path-breaking, new, sustainable groundwater conservation and storage project.”
The endorsement was embedded in an announcement Cadiz issued Friday, saying it executed letters of intent with four Southern California municipal water agencies to jointly investigate reviving the water scheme, which was rejected by the Metropolitan Water District seven years ago.
Curiously, the release didn’t identify the four public agencies. Schwarzenegger’s office and a Cadiz spokesman both turned down my request for their names.
So we’re left with a company headed by a man with political juice making a deal with four unidentified public water agencies to revive a $200-million project that was already shelved once.
As taxpayers, do you smell something? Me too.
One might feel better about such maneuvering if Cadiz Inc. were a strong company, but it hasn’t had a profitable year since at least 1999. Last year’s loss was nearly $16 million. The Los Angeles-based company has been kept on life support by its lenders, who have repeatedly extended their loans, presumably on a bet that Brackpool’s project will someday take flight.
At the end of March the company disclosed that its working capital was down to $4.3 million, enough to last another year.
Failure to get the water project moving or to line up new investments by then could force it to cut back in a way that might affect its “viability as a company.”
The whole story is here.
Tags: Cadiz > Cadiz Inc. > chance of rain > Emily Green > ground water > Inc > Keith Brackpool
Weekly Drought Map
Posted on | June 11, 2009 | No Comments
Every Thursday, this site links to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Weekly Drought Map. The bad news for Southern California, we’re not only on it, the tan shading indicates severe drought. The good news: There are a number of efforts being made to conserve water. To find them for California, go to Dry Gardening Resources and Dry Gardening Events or a new LA Times column The Dry Garden.
Metropolitan Water District’s rebate budget $24m in the red as member agency LADWP announces cash for grass program
Posted on | June 10, 2009 | No Comments
From Aquafornia via the Riverside Press Enterprise: “Metropolitan Water District’s board (yesterday) ordered an audit after questioning the management of a regional rebate program for water-saving appliances that is $24 million in the red.
The board of directors, meeting in Los Angeles on Tuesday, rejected a committee recommendation to pull money out of reserves to pay for a flurry of outstanding rebate claims incurred in the past few months, when the program had run out of money.
“This program has not been managed or monitored properly,” said board member James Blake, who represents the city of Fullerton. “We said when the money was gone, it was gone. We have not only used up the money, we are proposing to double or triple the money.”
Directors voted to have MWD’s auditor validate all pending claims to come up with an exact dollar figure, and to evaluate the best use of conservation dollars. No money will be spent until the audit is complete, according to the vote. A report is expected at the next board meeting, July 14.”
Meanwhile on June 2nd, the Metropolitan member agency, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, launched a new cash-for-grass program.
UPDATE JUNE 10, 2009, 1:41PM PST — A MWD spokesperson said today that of the $24m outstanding rebate payments for water-saving appliances, $2m concern home-owner claims. As a result of the debt and funding freeze, the MWD program will be on “hiatus” until the board decides how to act. More will be known about the fate of the program after the July 14 board meeting. Meanwhile, the cash-for-grass program recently unveiled by the Met member agency the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which is funded by the City of Los Angeles, will be unaffected other than the tortuous wait on the rebate telephone line shared with Metropolitan.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Metropolitan Water District of Southern California > rebates
Babbitt aide choice for Bureau of Land Management
Posted on | June 9, 2009 | No Comments
THE Salt Lake Tribune reports, “Bob Abbey, who helped former Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt complete a Utah wilderness inventory 10 years ago, is President Barack Obama’s nominee to head up the US Bureau of Land Management. Full story here and June 10 follow up here. Background on Federal West here.
Via Great Basin Water Network.
From the Las Vegas Sun, June 10, “Abbey was the choice of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who personally recommended him to Interior Secretary Ken Salzar for the job.”
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > US Bureau of Land Management > US Department of Interior
Dry gardening column begins in LA Times
Posted on | June 9, 2009 | 5 Comments
No, it wasn’t Saturday’s chorus of boos over the interview with the landscapers of the new Los Angeles Police Department Headquarters. It is the beginning of a weekly column, The Dry Garden, dedicated to ways to conserve water in the garden, whether that garden has lawn or a saintly collection of Mediterranean and native plants.
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