Water Heist Update

Some Mission Viejo residents who attended the Santa Margarita Water District’s special meetings criticized the proposal, and others said the process was blatantly corrupt. The public was invited to hear and comment on the Cadiz Proposal to ship water 200 miles from the Mojave Desert to south Orange County. The first meeting was July 25.

From an article about a similar Cadiz proposal: “As a publicly traded company, Cadiz, Inc. is roughly $56 million in debt and so in an attempt to become profitable Scott Slater and his business cronies devised a plan to pump 200,000 acre-feet of water out of the Mojave Desert and transfer it to Los Angeles in a deal proposed with the Metropolitan Water District. The heavily flawed plan ran into to a heap of criticism almost immediately. The environmental concerns coupled with the fact that the amount of water being pumped out would ultimately suck the underground aquifer dry caused the deal to fall flat. The deal was so bad that the purchaser of the water, the Metropolitan Water District, voted against the project.” http://responsiblewaterpolicies.org/history/

Vern Nelson’s report on the first meeting in Mission Viejo, held July 25 at the Community Center, was published on this blog ( http://missionviejoca.org/html/article225.html ).

The July 25 meeting ran until 1:00 a.m., and it was continued to July 31.

On Aug. 1, Nelson posted an update on the Orange Juice Blog, summarizing the outcome of the second meeting:

“Update August 1. Figures. Bastards. The Santa Margarita Water Board voted unanimously last night to approve the EIR for this monstrosity. At least now they’ll get reimbursed for their expenses. Now, as so often, it’s up to the lawsuits to stop it. The lawyers always love that. Too bad, south County ratepayers, this is on your tab. We here at the Orange Juice, however, are always trying to think of constructive things you can do about [expletive] like this – and we know of at least one GREAT candidate who is running for this Board in November – stay tuned!”

Those who want more information, particularly on where the water is coming from, can find it in Chris Clarke’s Aug. 1 post on SoCal Focus.

Clarke begins:

“In a development that surprised exactly no one, the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD) Board of Directors voted unanimously last night to certify the Final Environmental Impact Report for the Cadiz Water Project, as well as the Project's Groundwater Management, Monitoring, and Mitigation Plan and the terms under which the water district will buy water from Cadiz.

“Though it was all but inevitable, given Rancho Santa Margarita's urgent need to water its lawns with Mojave Desert groundwater, the vote nonetheless becomes the most recent iteration in California's 162-year history of treating its deserts as worthless -- except as they contribute to the comfort of coastal Californians.”

Continue reading: http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/environment/cadiz-california-and-dissing-the-desert.html