Cadiz speaks
FIRST, thanks to Aquafornia, the news feed of the Water Education Foundation, for carrying today’s guest commentary from Cadiz Inc General Counsel Scott Slater, and to Mr Slater for taking the time to address questions raised here and in other publications, including the Los Angeles Times, WaterWired and Aguanomics.…
David Zetland on political influence, insider trading and Cadiz
DAVID ZETLAND, the Berkeley-based water economist and publisher of Aguanomics, today follows up on Cadiz’s June 5 stock surge and the market position of Cadiz CEO Keith Brackpool: Who knew what when in advance of the Cadiz-issued endorsements of the Cadiz groundwater project by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt?
“What intrigues me is that Brackpool took options on 60,000 shares on May 22,” Zetland writes. “They were worth about $400,000 then and about $750,000 two weeks later. (He only had 90,000 shares before exercising that option. Was it “in the money”? Did he sell those shares?…)”
“Bottom Line,” Zetland writes, “It’s fine to buy and sell water to make a profit. It’s NOT fine to use political influence to change the value of your water trading …
The Governor’s bump
CADIZ Inc filed its quarterly report for April through June 2009 yesterday, a period still pregnant with unanswered questions over compromising endorsements from the Governor of California, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt.
…
Dear Governor
August 6, 2009
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, California 95814
Re: Cadiz Groundwater Storage and Dry-Year Supply Program
…
Question time for Cadiz
IN 1998, the private water speculator Cadiz, Inc began selling the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California on the idea of a groundwater project in the Mojave Desert. As enthusiasm for it grew, by November 1999, the US Bureau of Land Management and Metropolitan had produced a draft environmental impact statement as to what they imagined that the Cadiz project would entail, its risks, its benefits and its costs.
For the next two years, hydrologists and geologists from the US National Park Service, the US Geological Survey and San Bernardino County vetted the claims of the draft EIS and returned their comments.
In September 2001, a final Environmental Impact Statement was published. The collective commentary was so withering and the risks revealed by independent scrutiny so overwhelming that in 2002 the Metropolitan board voted to abandon the project.
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