April 23, 2018 - The Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks is comprised of more than 1,500 current, former and retired employees of the National Park Service. For several years the Coalition and its partners have been opposed to the Cadiz Water Project, because of the potential significant adverse impacts the project would have on groundwater resources and desert springs of nearby Mojave National Preserve, located in the California desert. In short, if approved the Cadiz Project would allow for extracting ancient desert groundwater and pumping it to a Southern California water district.

The Coalition opposes the Cadiz project due to the significant concerns raised by science focused federal agencies such as the National Park Service and the United States Geological Survey about the accuracy of Cadiz’s science. A newly published peer-reviewed study verifies why those agencies had concerns. The study can be found here.

Based on the peer reviewed findings, it’s clear Cadiz’s self-touted CEQA EIR did not adequately disclose impacts to desert springs, did not identify all the springs in the region, and did not identify that the State of California is a land owner in the region, requiring a permit. Based on the fact that Cadiz’s state review and mitigation plan are fatally flawed, this project must not move forward without undergoing an independent environmental review.
Source: Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks