Washington August 27, 2018 – Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) sent a letter to every member of the California Assembly’s Committee on Natural Resources calling on them to pass SB 120, a bill that would protect the Mojave Desert from Cadiz’s harmful water extraction project.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration removed several federal regulatory hurdles for Cadiz despite scientific evidence that the water project would extract more than five times the aquifer’s natural recharge rate.
“SB 120 is key to safeguarding California’s fragile desert and its most vital resource – water,” Senator Feinstein wrote. “In light of rollbacks of federal protections for public lands, state protections are needed now more than ever.”
Full text of the letter follows:
August 27, 2018
Dear Assemblymember:
I write to express my strong support for Senate Bill 120 (SB 120), which I understand will be before your Committee tomorrow. I ask for your help to advance this bill out of the Committee on Natural Resources and pass it in this legislative session.
SB 120 is key to safeguarding California’s fragile desert and its most vital resource – water. In light of rollbacks of federal protections for public lands, state protections are needed now more than ever.
The Cadiz water extraction project illustrates the urgent need for SB 120. Cadiz, Inc. continually chooses to disregard objective scientific analyses by the U.S. Geological Survey and National Park Service that show the maximum recharge rate for the targeted aquifers is between 2,000 and 10,000 acre feet of water per year. Instead, Cadiz proposes to extract an average of 50,000 acre feet over a 50-year period. In short, this would decimate the desert.
Projects like Cadiz put private profit over public lands that belong to all Californians. I have included a photo of my favorite desert tortoise. The survival of this and many rare desert species depend on our protecting the iconic California desert.
Sincerely,
Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator
Do not support the Cadiz project.
Any more extraction of ground water from the desert will cause flora to die and with the variety of flora the animals that depend on them will cease to exist, also. The drying of the desert will create more dust and as the wind blows the more sand dunes will be created. This will greatly impact our desert climate as well and we will end up with our own version of the Sahara Desert. This will also impact the lives of many individuals living in the desert cities and communities. We must always consider the long-range affects of our actions in the fragile desert environment.