Water under the Mojave Desert
Southern California needs water. A company based in the Mojave Desert, of all places, is keen to sell it some. The company, Cadiz, grows lemons, organic raisins and other crops and has an estimated 17 million to 34 million acre-feet of groundwater under its property, just down valley from the Mojave National Preserve. The company figures it could earn more by piping water to Orange County than by selling lemons.
The pipeline had been held up by an Obama administration judgment that required the project to undergo environmental review, even though its pipeline would be sited in a railroad right of way, which could have exempted it. On March 29, those memos were rescinded by the Trump administration’s Bureau of Land Management, potentially clearing the way for the project to go forward.
President Trump is famously anti-regulation. In this case, his stance may well end up sending 50,000 acre-feet of water a year from the desert aquifer to suburban lawns. Since this is more than flows into the aquifer each year, the sales would lower it over time — as much as 80 feet, which the company says will be the limit. The consequences aren’t entirely predictable, in part because the hydrology of the area is still somewhat mysterious.
The worst-case scenario would see springs in and around Mojave National Preserve dry up, depriving bighorn sheep and other animals and plants of water. Cadiz and a hydrologist at the consulting firm Aquilogic in Costa Mesa, Calif., say this outcome is incredibly unlikely and that the project will be very carefully monitored. A hydrologist at the United States Geological Survey’s California Water Science Center in San Diego, John Izbicki, says without more information about the springs, it’s impossible to determine the impact.
Even if no springs dry up, the project explicitly plans to draw down in decades water that took thousands of years to accumulate. Michael Madrigal, president of the Native American Land Conservancy and a member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians, says that the indigenous community who call the Mojave home would oppose the project even if there were absolutely no impact on the surface. “If they are taking something that we can’t see, they are still taking it,” he said.
Cadiz plans to sell only 5 percent of the water over 50 years. If the company changes hands, however, or drought becomes acute, it is conceivable that much more could be removed down the line. If pumping stopped in 2067, the aquifer would very slowly fill up again. But the idea of California walking away from a source of water now is implausible. Imagine how much more valuable this water will be in the second half of the century.
Southern California needs water. But Southern California will need water even more in the future. Aside from any nearterm risks to the desert, the plan would tap a resource our grandchildren may well wish we left alone. Emma Marris, an environmental journalist, is the author of “The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World.”