Cadiz: Wrong in any Wordle
Posted on | July 30, 2012 | 2 Comments
Faced with a crowd of 500 people* last week, many protestors, the Rancho Santa Margarita Water District postponed certifying the final environmental impact report for its groundwater-mining bid in the Mojave Desert. Rather, the final vote for what is styled as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project is scheduled for tomorrow night, July 31st, 2012 at 6pm in Mission Viejo (click here for details), with a video hook up for Joshua Tree protestors who organizers clearly hope won’t have the steam to make another 300-mile return trip. For those of you who missed last week’s meeting, this YouTube video of what appears to be Cadiz lawyers feeding scripts to “public” commenters planted in the audience is a priceless piece of citizen journalism. For more on the project, click here for a Pacific Institute analysis of its shortcomings. The text is even more withering when it hasn’t been through Wordle, but the terms “unresolved,” “over-drafting,” “ignores,” “shaky,” and “overestimated” should supply the gist.
*This text was updated shortly after posting. The identification of all 500 attendees to the 7/25 meeting as “protestors” was corrected to reflect the presence of some project advocates. CoR apologizes for the error.
The “M Opinion” should avoid California incest
Posted on | July 14, 2012 | No Comments
Defending his department after the release of “Chinatown,” a Los Angeles Department of Water & Power executive is said to have protested, “There was never any incest!” That was 1974. As yesterday the final environmental impact report for the Cadiz, Inc groundwater mining project proposed for the Mojave Desert was issued, this much is known: Incest is a given.
Except this time there’s no part for Faye Dunaway. The incest is political. Much has been written about Cadiz generosity to politicians. Public servants who have been on the Cadiz payroll and/or recipients of notable donations include Los Angeles Mayor Antoino Villaraigosa, former California Governor Gray Davis, Susan Kennedy — chief of staff of former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, former California state assemblyman Richard Katz and San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt. For background on Cadiz and its political largesse, this compendium is a start. Latterly, much cash has been flowing to the Mojave, to San Bernardino County, where the Cadiz project is located.
Cadiz’s propensity to grease palms is suddenly sharply relevant. As the final environmental impact report is issued, one might be tempted take it as exhaustive — as the point instead of a thick distraction — unless alerted to the Cadiz efforts taken to produce its hundreds of pages without input from the scientists best equipped to judge its claims about safe water yields. Cadiz justifies shutting out hydrologists from the US Geological Survey from the review process by arguing that because its proposed pipeline would run along railway land, and the railway has already been granted federal right-of-way, no further federal involvement is needed.
That would make sense if pipelines, like trains, didn’t dewater the land that they cross.
Something called the “M Opinion” currently being developed by federal solicitors will ultimately decide whether or not one sort of right-of-way may legally be treated as interchangeable with another. In deciding that question, and weighing its ramifications, it’s likely that the White House Council on Environmental Quality will be consulted.
Which brings us back to incest. The White House environment office is run by Nancy Sutley, former advisor to Gov. Gray Davis and deputy to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. During much of her time in the Davis government, Cadiz CEO Keith Brackpool, donor of more than $100,000 to the governor’s campaign, was part what the LA Times characterized as a kitchen cabinet — even, some joked, California’s unofficial water master. Read the superb vintage Times piece to be reminded of how Gov Davis and Mr Brackpool, an almost comic book-issue Englishman, met with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak while Cadiz had business before the Egyptian leader.
When Sutley worked for the Los Angeles mayor, rightly or wrongly, she gained the reputation as the de facto face of Cadiz in meetings at the regional water authority. This is not to say that she’s corrupt, or even that this characterization was fair. Her reputation on conservation is solid if subject to hagiography in her Wikipedia entry. Unlike the mayor, Sutley does not appear to have been an employee of Cadiz. She has not holidayed with Cadiz CEO Keith Brackpool. Mr Brackpool has not hosted her birthday party or traveled to the Orient with her. But Mr Brackpool has done all of those things with Mr Villaraigosa.
To avoid so much as the appearance of impropriety, as the all-important decision looms whether or not to bring the USGS in to review Cadiz claims, Ms Sutley should err on the side of caution and recuse herself from any part of decision-making to do with Cadiz or the “M Opinion.” The highest office in the land should be above punchlines about incest.
BLM’s new “alternative” on Vegas pipe
Posted on | July 11, 2012 | No Comments
Ever heard of the Council on Environmental Quality? Chaired by former LA Deputy Mayor Nancy Sutley, it’s a White House office that according to its website “coordinates Federal environmental efforts.” To judge by a recent update from the Bureau of Land Management, Sutley’s office may just hold the key for a compromise in a long-running battle over rural groundwater between Utah and Nevada. Using powers supposedly afforded by the Council, the Bureau is adding a new alternative to an environmental impact statement that may allow Vegas to pump and Utah to keep its water too. The only clear loser is the environment. Click here to keep reading
Tags: Bureau of Land Management > chance of rain > Emily Green > Southern Nevada Water Authority
It’s official: Typical L.A. garden goes unused
Posted on | July 6, 2012 | 1 Comment
Given that water suppliers estimate that roughly half of household water use in Southern California cities takes place outdoors, presumably it is automated spigots and sprinklers on timers greening the spaces trafficked most heavily by pool cleaners and mow-and-blow teams.
To hear several of the study authors as well as a subject on today’s Larry Mantle Show, click here.
I vote for him
Posted on | July 3, 2012 | 1 Comment
Unfortunately, Jay Famiglietti isn’t running for office, unfortunate because the University of California scientist has character to match his smarts. The Irvine-based hydrologist is shouting from roof tops about how disastrous a course we are taking by, say, investing more in the space program, energy and mineral studies and weather prediction than understanding Earth’s fresh water supply. He’s not saying spend less on those other things, but more on understanding fresh water so that we can plan for the future with some semblance of understanding of how much water will be available, where, how and when. Some may remember the Famiglietti “We’re screwed” quote from “Last Call at the Oasis,” spiritedly reprised recently by a fellow hydrologist at WaterWired. Others may recall the 2011 Famiglietti-led study that found we had already over drafted the groundwater of California’s Central Valley by enough water to fill Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir. Now, in a new post for National Geographic, Famiglietti lays out what we don’t know about the dynamics and quantity of our fresh water supply (most everything, says the expert), why we need to get up to speed fast (the old water and life thing), and how this must shoot straight to the top of public policy. If you drink water, or eat food, or require shade etc, you want to read the National Geographic post and then write someone who is running for office or, preferably, in it, and hold their feet to the fire. Unless you or your children plan to live on some as yet discovered planet, no plan, not for health care, not economic recovery, not for national security, means a thing if the country destroys its watersheds.
Photos: Top: Jay Famiglietti. Source: University of California, Irvine. Below, USGS hydrologist Joseph Poland posing by a telephone pole in the Central Valley near Mendota, California. Click here for the USGS fact sheet on subsidence for more on Poland and the impact of groundwater mining.
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