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Cadiz Water Heist Resolution

OPPOSE TRUMP’S RESCISSION OF FEDERAL PERMIT REQUIREMENTS FOR CADIZ CORPORATION’S PROPOSED WATER MINE, PUMP AND PIPE PROJECT
(2017 – Cadiz Water Heist Resolution)

WHEREAS, the Cadiz Corporation proposes to extract and sell more than five times the amount of water that is recharged naturally, or roughly 50,000 acre-feet per year for the next 50 years from the hydrologically connected rural ground water system underlying 35,000 acres of pristine East Mojave desert including the National Preserve and the Mojave Trails National Monument, described by President Obama as an area that “exemplifies the remarkable ecology of the Mojave Desert, where the hearty insistence of life is scratched out from unrelenting heat and dryness” which amount of water of water to be extracted is .between 1 million and 2 million acre-feet of water over the lifetime of project, even though the amount that would sustainably be recharged is only about 500,000, according to federal agency estimates; AND

WHEREAS monitoring and empirical testing has shown that human, animal and plant communities in the East Mojave desert rely upon a residual and connected underground water supply system that is naturally balanced by a relatively low amount of annual rainfall providing well water for a small historic and native american traditional population of people including the Chemehuevi and Mojave tribes, the National Park Service employees and a small number of other historic settlers and providing scarce natural percolating artesian springs and seeps in exceedingly rare riparian areas sustaining safe refuge to a wide variety of rare and endangered plants and wildlife; and recent testimony by these East Mojave residents monitoring well levels indicates that the addition of even one well in the the hydrologically connected area causes ground water levels to significantly drop which concern is complicated by global warming which has caused drought and desiccation in the desert regions in recent years; AND

WHEREAS, despite California State Senator Dianne Feinstein’s proclamation that the Cadiz water mining project poses a grave threat to the California desert and should not be approved and despite the efforts of the State of California’s to provide funding for development of sustainable water supplies for southern California including improved technology for treatment and cycling, salt desalination plants, pipe replacement, new coastal rainwater catchment basins and reservoirs, the Donald J. Trump administration in one of its first acts overturned the Obama Administration’s decision to require a federal project permit and environmental review of the Cadiz Project;

THEREFORE, be it resolved that the California Democratic Party supports Senator Dianne Feinstein in her vehement opposition to President Donald J. Trump’s callous disregard for empirical scientific evidence and environmental sustainability, and his administration’s rescission of federal permit requirements thus relieving the Cadiz project from federal environmental impact review;

FURTHER, be it resolved that the California Democratic Party shall copy this resolution to the White House and the United States Department of the Interior and, as a sanction, to California Democrat, U. S. Representative Tony Cardenas who callously and without reason of the greater good, supported California Republican U. S. Representative Tom McClintock in his request for the rescission of the federal permit requirements and environmental impact review of the Cadiz Corporation water project.

Ruth Musser-Lopez, AD33, SD16 Ex-Officio

Endorsed by unanimous vote 4-25-2017