What's our next crisis? Try water

California is on the verge of a water shortage crisis akin to the power crisis, warns U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

She says unless work is started now on building new water storage facilities, in a few years that state could run out of available water for its growing population and economy.

Sen. Feinstein says there have been no water storage facilities of any significant size build in California in more that 30 years.

The senator is proposing both surface storage in reservoirs and underground storage in what are called water banks. The draft legislation does not specify what projects to build. Experts have said that a totally new reservoir would probably meet with fatal opposition but raising the heights of some existing dams to thus expand existing reservoirs might find more support.

The proposal also calls for conservation measures to save about 1.3 million acre-feet of water a year. They are contained in a proposal to fund Cal-Fed, the state and federal partnership that has been trying to sort out California's conflicting water demands.

The senator's bill is expected to be introduced in mid-February.

http://sanjose.bcentral.com/sanjose/stories/2001/01/29/daily57.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 02, 2001

Answers

The British businessman who aims to make $1bn taking water from the desert Duncan Campbell in the Mojave desert Friday February 2, 2001 The Guardian

In the shimmering beauty of the Mojave desert, some 200 miles from Los Angeles and nestling between the Marbles and the Ship Mountains just off Route 66, lies Cadiz, a tiny settlement built as a watering station for the old railroad and now almost deserted.

The temperature in high summer averages 46C (115F) and has hit 56C (132F). The desolate terrain, with its tumbleweed, coyotes, jackrabbits and breathtakingly clear starry skies, has drawn drifters and film-makers alike. Now Cadiz could be about to play a part in one of the great dramas of California: the battle for water.

The settlement stands at the centre of a $1bn project which supporters claim will solve southern California's water problems for the next 50 years, and which detractors suggest will prove to be an economic and ecological disaster that will damage the delicate desert eco-system for centuries to come.

At the heart of the largest public-private project in the state's history, is a buccaneering self-made businessman from Surrey called Keith Brackpool.

Mr Brackpool, 43, who still has family in England, came to the United States in his 20s as an investment banker. He was head of the American division of Albert Fisher, the food distribution company, until 1991 when it emerged that he had a $10m controlling stake in a subsidiary of Polly Peck, the Asil Nadir-owned company which had collapsed dramatically. Mr Brackpool resigned from Albert Fisher. His spokeswoman said yesterday that his departure from the company was "extremely amicable" and that he had left at the time "so that there was no suggestion of impropriety".

In the early 80s, Mr Brackpool had been shown satellite photos indicating that there was water under the Mojave desert, and he embarked on the scheme which could now come to fruition. His company has gradually bought up almost 60,000 acres of the desert.

Cadiz Inc's tiny office in the Mojave desert consists of a wooden house with a jokey sign inside which warns employees that, if they speak in Spanish, they will be paid in pesos. The company's current business is agricultural - producing grapes and citrus fruits - and it posted a net loss in 1999 of $8,594,000, which, it says, is similar to any project at its early stages of development.

But the company's massive potential is shown by Cadiz's main headquarters - a spectacular skyscraper overlooking the Pacific in Santa Monica. Whether it can realise that promise depends on California's desperate need for more water.

Forced to cut back on the quantity of water it is sucking out of the Colorado river, the state faces a possible critical drought. The Metropolitan Water District (MWD), which provides around 17m people with water in southern California, is seriously looking at the possibility of a $1bn 50-year deal with Mr Brackpool that would both store excess water in wet years and pump water from an aquifer under the desert during dry years.

This month, a decision is due to be made on whether the Cadiz Programme, as it is called, should go ahead, subject to final environmental tests. The crucial decision comes just as California is in the midst of a power crisis, with rolling black-outs across the state.

Mr Brackpool's company has several agricultural schemes on the go, including one with the Saudi royal family in Egypt, which Cadiz Inc says could become the largest single agricultural project in the world.

It is also one of the biggest financial backers of California governor Gray Davis, the man who hopes to take the Democratic nomination for president in 2004. Cadiz Inc contributed $133,000 to Mr Davis's 1998 gubernatorial campaign and a total of $445,000 to all politicians. His spokeswoman said this week that "every publicly-held company in the state" made similar donations and that they were made to "candidates who supported a positive business environment".

Mr Brackpool was appointed co-chairman of the Agriculture and Water Transition Task Force when Mr Davis took office and was appointed to the Commission on Building for the 21st Century. He is bullish about the importance of the Cadiz project and said this week: "Experiencing massive population growth and severe cutbacks on existing water supplies, the state risks its future viability and economic prosperity without efforts such as the Cadiz Programme."

A spokesman for Mr Davis said the governor took advice from "a wide variety of contacts" of whom Mr Brackpool was one, but that he was not influenced in any way by who had, or had not, contributed to his political campaigns. A spokesman for the MWD said there had been no attempt from the governor's office to influence its decision in any way and that it had not received a single call from him on the subject.

Before the scheme can go ahead, environmental studies by the US Geological Survey and the National Parks Service have to be done, a process which could be completed in a few weeks. But the stage is already set for confrontation as the plan is being vigorously challenged by environmentalists.

Steven Krefting of the National Parks Conservation Association, a major opponent of the plan, says that the environmental impact studies done so far have been flawed and that the project could seriously damage both the wildlife and the atmosphere in the desert. "The desert is quite pristine and clear, you expect to see lots of stars at night. What you would get (as a result of the dust storms) is a constant haze. I'm not prepared to sacrifice a desert eco-system so that people can fill up their swimming pools," he said.

Ellen Stern Harris, executive director of the Fund for the Environment and a director emeritus of the MWD, said that the MWD's special committee has yet to address the myriad environmental problems the Cadiz deal presents.

Mr Brackpool is undeterred by the criticism. "We seem to have developed an extraordinary notion that any water solution requires 100% consensus to make it happen," he said in a speech last year. "We encourage and we give incentives to those who oppose progress."

Fiona Hutton, who speaks for Cadiz, says that many others support the scheme and backs this up with a sheaf of positive responses from newspapers such as the Orange County Register, which congratulates the MWD for "thinking ahead". She says that the scheme would only go ahead if it passed strict environmental tests. The company argues that underground water storage has less environmental impact than reservoirs and dams, and that the project will create local jobs.

None of which will satisfy Elden Hughes of the environmental organisation the Sierra Club, who believes that the scheme should be halted because it could destroy the habitat of the desert tortoise, an endangered species, and bighorn sheep in the vicinity, as well as creating the possibility of dust storms.

Mr Hughes says that the scheme is flawed on both economic and environmental grounds and that the MWD might find they had lost $200m before "they find out the truth... they're taking on a very bad bet. If they start pumping, we could lose all the springs - by which time Cadiz will be in Egypt growing melons."

Death and disaster

There is no more emotive issue in Californian politics than water. When, in 1913, Dublin-born engineer William Mulholland opened the 233- mile long Los Angeles aqueduct - the longest in the world - he told the cheering crowd: "There it is! Take it!" But the construction led to the so-called "Owens Valley War" and the deaths of 450 people.

Farmers in the eastern Sierra Nevada who had lost their water supply as a result of the scheme dynamited the aqueduct in1924, and in the same year 70 armed men seized a key aqueduct gate and shut off the entire flow of water. They were joined by 700 supporters in a standoff as businessmen urged the state government to send in the militia and the LA Times hailed them as "honest, earnest, hardworking American citizens who look upon Los Angeles as an octopus about to strangle out their lives".

Sabotage

In 1927, masked men blew up another key section and Mulholland dispatched a patrol with a shoot-to-kill policy. In 1928 a dam collapsed, releasing a 15bn gallon flood that killed 450 people, with bodies washed up as far away as San Diego. Mulholland was blamed and died seven years later. An engineering association exonerated him in 1992.

Water and corruption were the themes of the 1974 film Chinatown, which won its writer Robert Towne an Oscar and in which the character of Mulray was loosely based on Mulholland.

"Every tree, every lawn, every blade of grass... is a forced growth, made possible by man's ingenuity in bringing water to what otherwise would be a treeless waste," was how Boyle Workman, one of LA's turn of the century real estate developers described the importance of water.

Death and disaster

There is no more emotive issue in Californian politics than water. When, in 1913, Dublin-born engineer William Mulholland opened the 233- mile long Los Angeles aqueduct - the longest in the world - he told the cheering crowd: "There it is! Take it!" But the construction led to the so-called "Owens Valley War" and the deaths of 450 people.

Farmers in the eastern Sierra Nevada who had lost their water supply as a result of the scheme dynamited the aqueduct in1924, and in the same year 70 armed men seized a key aqueduct gate and shut off the entire flow of water. They were joined by 700 supporters in a standoff as businessmen urged the state government to send in the militia and the LA Times hailed them as "honest, earnest, hardworking American citizens who look upon Los Angeles as an octopus about to strangle out their lives".

Sabotage

In 1927, masked men blew up another key section and Mulholland dispatched a patrol with a shoot-to-kill policy. In 1928 a dam collapsed, releasing a 15bn gallon flood that killed 450 people, with bodies washed up as far away as San Diego. Mulholland was blamed and died seven years later. An engineering association exonerated him in 1992.

Water and corruption were the themes of the 1974 film Chinatown, which won its writer Robert Towne an Oscar and in which the character of Mulray was loosely based on Mulholland.

"Every tree, every lawn, every blade of grass... is a forced growth, made possible by man's ingenuity in bringing water to what otherwise would be a treeless waste," was how Boyle Workman, one of LA's turn of the century real estate developers described the importance of water.

http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4129308,00.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), February 02, 2001.