{"id":428087,"date":"2026-08-09T13:36:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428087\/"},"modified":"2026-08-09T13:36:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-09T13:36:13","slug":"will-southern-california-ever-get-mojave-desert-groundwater-should-it-san-bernardino-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/428087\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Southern California ever get Mojave Desert groundwater? Should it? \u2013 San Bernardino Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cadiz Inc.<\/a> hopes what lies beneath more than 30,000 Mojave Desert acres in San Bernardino County can one day sustain people. But after four decades, the company\u2019s ambitious groundwater-pumping plan has yielded only fruits, vegetables and a mountain of legal bills.<\/p>\n

The latest salvo in the long-running fight over the Mojave Groundwater Bank<\/a> \u2014 formerly called the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project or Cadiz Water Project \u2014 came last month with a new lawsuit from project critics.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re hoping to overturn the federal Bureau of Land Management\u2019s July 9 decision<\/a> that clears the way for 162 miles of a former natural gas pipeline to ferry desert groundwater to the Inland Empire and points beyond.<\/p>\n

\u201cBLM\u2019s attempt to revive this inadequately studied project is another example of how the Trump administration is selling out the American people and our public lands to private industry hellbent on profiting from natural resources,\u201d the plaintiffs\u2019 attorney Elizabeth Forsyth said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like Groundhog\u2019s Day: they still haven\u2019t corrected the legal errors previously identified by the court, and we\u2019re filing another lawsuit to address the same concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding to the lawsuit, Cathryn Rivera, chief operating officer for the Los Angeles-based Cadiz, said the BLM reviewed the project for five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are confident the record supports the bureau\u2019s decision,\u201d she said via email.<\/p>\n

Critics, including environmentalists and local Native American tribes, maintain the project would destroy a vital aquifer while endangering cultural traditions, plants and wildlife in the process.<\/p>\n

\u201cCadiz is a threat to all creatures great and small and the core values of protecting our parks and environment from irreplaceable ruin, all in the name of profit,\u201d civil rights leader Dolores Huerta said in a news release following the BLM ruling.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is exactly this type of greed and injustice that I have dedicated my life to oppose.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cadiz executives insist groundwater currently lost to evaporation would be extracted through a sustainable, thoroughly vetted process that\u2019s been subject to dozens of studies and multiple court approvals.<\/p>\n

The project dates to the early 1980s<\/a>, when satellite imagery uncovered the isolated aquifer in the Cadiz and Fenner valleys near the Arizona border.<\/p>\n

Cadiz bought land above the aquifer and devised a plan to extract its groundwater. For 35 years, the company has used the aquifer to water lemons, grapes, squash and other crops on roughly 3,500 acres of its property.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact is tens of thousands of acre-feet of groundwater that flows through our aquifer is lost to evaporation each year at desert dry lakes just below our ranch,\u201d Cadiz spokesperson Courtney Deneger said via email. \u201cConserving water before it evaporates is the most environmentally friendly source of new water supply on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

The project would use two routes called the Northern and Southern pipelines to deliver groundwater, which would be managed through a San Bernardino County-approved plan to prevent over-extraction, according to Cadiz.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Northern Pipeline, which Cadiz acquired from the El Paso Natural Gas Company, would run northeast through Barstow to the Antelope Valley.<\/p>\n

Seventy percent of the Northern Pipeline\u2019s capacity is ticketed for Inland area water providers, according to the Secure Water Alliance<\/a>, a labor and business group. The project also could keep more water in the Colorado River through exchange arrangements, according to Cadiz.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs soon as the pipeline is repurposed for water, many Inland Empire residents will have a new, reliable and more affordable long-term water source,\u201d Rich Lambros, the alliance\u2019s executive director, said via email.<\/p>\n

Cadiz also said the Northern Pipeline, which could deliver enough water to meet the needs of 200,000 people a year, would spur $386 million in economic activity during construction. Once operational, the pipeline would support 56 jobs, $21 million in regional economic activity and up to $3.4 million a year in state and local tax revenue, the company added.<\/p>\n

The BLM ruling \u2014 the Northern Pipeline crosses federally protected lands like Mojave Trails National Monument<\/a> \u2014 found the underground, 30-inch steel pipeline would not significantly affect the environment.<\/p>\n

Nonsense, argue critics who warn the project would pump groundwater faster than it could be replenished and dry up springs used by wildlife \u2014 bighorn sheep and desert tortoises, for example \u2014 and native plants.<\/p>\n

The drawdown of the water table will deplete and expose desert playa lakebeds, resulting in air pollution from windswept sediments laden with toxic heavy metals, according to last month\u2019s lawsuit filed in Los Angeles federal court<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"GroundwaterGroundwater rises from a pipe in the Mojave Desert on land owned by Cadiz Inc. as part of the Mojave Groundwater Bank, also known as the Cadiz Water Project. The decades-old proposal to pump groundwater from the site to the rest of Southern California got a boost last month when the Trump administration approved using an old oil pipeline to ferry water despite strong objections from environmentalists and Native American tribes. (Courtesy of Cadiz Inc.)<\/p>\n

Some tribes view the project as an assault on their sovereignty and cultural heritage, saying the aquifer supports sacred springs and landscapes that are part of their cultural heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur people have been here since time immemorial, and we will not allow the Cadiz Corporation to destroy the living landscapes that preserve and teach our traditional ways,\u201d Daniel Silvas, chairman of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe<\/a>, said in a news release.<\/p>\n

At least one tribe supports the project. Lytton Rancheria<\/a> of Northern California became a majority investor in 2025, making the project \u201cthe first major water infrastructure project that is majority owned by a Native American Tribe,\u201d said Deneger, the Cadiz spokesperson.<\/p>\n

Other project critics include Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, whose district includes project land.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis decision ignores a fundamental truth: a private company should not be allowed to mine groundwater from one of the driest regions in North America without a full accounting of the consequences,\u201d Ruiz said in a post on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The project\u2019s fortunes have ebbed and flowed depending on who\u2019s in the White House.<\/p>\n

The first Trump<\/a> administration issued a pipeline permit, a decision reversed by the Biden<\/a> administration in 2021.<\/p>\n

The latest legal challenge aside, the project still faces hurdles.<\/p>\n

A state law enacted in 2019 requires the project to get California State Lands Commission approval and undergo an independent scientific review; in 2024, the commission rejected a lease<\/a> for a pipeline segment crossing state lands.<\/p>\n

Andrew Ayres<\/a>, a water economics professor at the University of Nevada, said the project is \u201ca hedge against future uncertainties\u201d in water supply.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of these projects kind of get floated and hang around for a while because major public water suppliers like to have a diverse portfolio of things that they could reach into if they had to,\u201d Ayres said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of these run into roadblocks further down the line that mean that either they\u2019re not worth it or they\u2019re just not feasible. If we\u2019re able to solve bigger problems on the State Water Project and the Colorado River, I\u2019m not sure that Cadiz will end up manifesting in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

A new framework released by the U.S. Department of the Interior late last month calls for cutbacks in Colorado River water deliveries<\/a> to California and other states.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe future of the Colorado River Basin depends on developing new water supplies, not simply managing scarcity,\u201d Deneger said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Mojave Groundwater Bank is one of the few major water infrastructure projects that offers new water that can directly benefit the diminishing Colorado River.\u201d<\/p>\n

City News Service contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cadiz Inc. hopes what lies beneath more than 30,000 Mojave Desert acres in San Bernardino County can one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,536,643,9185,100,5518,136,646],"class_list":["post-428087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-donald-trump","tag-environment","tag-mojave-desert","tag-news","tag-san-bernardino-county","tag-top-stories","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}