The Cadiz Water Project: An Environmental Perspective Series Prologue

The Cadiz Water Project (CWP): An Environmental Perspective Series Prologue

This is the first in a series of columns which I’ll be posting about the CWP. It has the potential to achieve, i.e., reasonably result, in accomplishing a manifold number of the specific resilience goals and measurable adaptation responses as expressed in California’s August 2022 gauntlet document “CALIFORNIA’S WATER SUPPLY STRATEGY: Adapting to a Hotter, Drier Future.”

Please read the column first, you can go back to the "homework" links I've provided afterwards. Many of you, if in the industry, probably know all of these things already.

As for those who’ve blindly, vehemently opposed the CWP, IMO they did so because they didn’t do their homework but still feel it's their right to have an opinion.

Context and a better comprehension of true aquifer conditions, mitigations offered and actual ecological impacts, not manufactured, alarming and dystopic, aka catastrophic scenario ones to derail it, are necessary to acquire CWP impartiality. “Confirmation biases” (selective, pre-disposed observations, interpretations, theories) are among the most difficult to debunk.

In this series I'm not going to even attempt to convert the CWP's harshest critics but rather offer a strong protectionist's viewpoint (mine), its evolutionary trail out there among the "xerophytes" and sand....and I believe it's morphing into a better, more multi-beneficial effort.

Here’s Governor Newsom’s "hotter, drier future" plan, available in PDF for downloading. I encourage you to read it. And no, it’s neither long nor written in esoteric rocket scientist or theoretical physicist terminology, k? https://resources.ca.gov/-/med...

Now a P3 (Public/Private Partnership), the CWP has been declared DOA numerous times over its 25+ year arc. Like a Phoenix, the legendary bird from ancient Greek mythology, it once again has arisen for serious reassessment in spite of allegations surrounding its viable, long term sustainability……..even being derisively called a “Mojave Desert Mirage” by unknowledgeable detractors: https://www.cadizwaterproject....

I did attend, and my NGO, Clean Water Now (CWN), took no formal public position when the Final EIR was certified by Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD) in Mission Viejo (2012). I was personally in transition from general contractor and eco-NGO leader activist to professional environmental land use advisor and regulatory compliance consultant.

A foot in both worlds, I was still shocked by the behavior of NGO leaders and their sycophantic fellow travelers in attendance.

Regardless, open and transparent conversations are important, not to mention contesting water-related project proponents in full public view.

I believe every project that affects the environment, especially those focused upon the reality and emergency mindset during drought cycles, benefits from a spectrum of enviro-scrutiny, is better if the applicant is up for that crucible, those hurdles, that journey.

Yes, CWN did have reservations back in 2012, but they were mostly attributable to our inhouse lack of expertise and my poor education regarding sub-surface water dynamics (hydrogeology).

We’ve grown and learned, and the subsequent science, much of it embedded in the June 2019 Amended FEIR plus other State and federal studies, have us more open-minded and revisiting the CWP’s dynamics.

Independent, disinterested 3rd party peer reviews by highly credentialed and respected regulatory experts have made a difference as well: https://www.smwd.com/230/Cadiz-Project-Final-EIR-Volumes-1-7

I believe that today, especially in light of this most recent Southwest drought, it deserves a reexamination post-2012, and I've tried via close tracking, Q & A at related CWP hearings. I'm not endorsing it, btw, just trying to re-open "the conversation."

Deep-diving online for updates, perusing meeting minutes, personally interviewing the affiliated staff and a few of the associated BOD members, my understanding is much more refined.

Then too I’ve benefited from attendance and monitoring of the parallel, parent oversight JPA established in 2014, the Fenner Valley Water Authority: https://www.fvwa.org/about-us/

Evidence-based wonks and legitimate (non-paranoid, non-conspiratorial) scientists agree that most of the 21st Century has exhibited drought-like rainfall conditions plus attendant regional shortages.

Unfortunately, the adverse impacts have been unevenly distributed both temporally and geographically, which further confounds and confuses long range modeling experts. Here’s an educational, layman’s level primer about drought: https://water.ca.gov/water-bas...

A lot of their historical databases no longer apply to future predictability, so planning projections have greater degrees of uncertainty computations built into them than previously. Decision trees and forecast consequences, even extreme events, just aren’t their old foreseeable selves!

Native American tribes were either nomadic (seasonally moved to/near sustainable resources like food and water), sent hunting parties out (foraged far and wide from a permanent home base) or were a hybrid of both strategies.

SMWD is basically the latter, a supply portfolio hybrid utility and the CWP personifies far and wide via “remote storage.”

Ever the most innovative in SOC, have you heard of SMWD’s ginormous storage project off the Ortega Highway, the award-winning Trampas Reservoir (1.6 billion gallons capacity)? Existing Upper Oso Reservoir (1.3 billion gallons)? Upper Chiquita Reservoir? Gobernadora Multi-Purpose Basin?

With ≈200,000 customers, necessity is the mother of invention. https://www.smwd.com/311/Curre...

As a reference guide regarding available, above ground South OC storage, browse my previous column that briefly addressed some of the hindrances and general dynamics, why we in SOC are uniquely hobbled by topography and sub-surface/groundwater hydrology: https://voiceofoc.org/2021/08/...

Above ground storage can have significant evaporation rate losses that subterranean ones like the CWP avoid. Things like covering aqueducts with solar, what the Turlock Irrigation District is launching, is one intriguing example: https://www.tid.org/about-tid/...

Reservoirs with solar panels to both create energy and diminish evaporation are becoming essential, integral components. Look for SMWD to someday do something similar with theirs: https://www.bbc.com/future/art...

From a Texas A&M study of the Continental US (CONUS) evaporation modeling, with a lot of focus upon the perennially drier Southwestern regions: “Evaporation from open surface water is a critical and continuous process in the water cycle. Globally, evaporation losses from reservoirs are estimated to be greater than the combined consumption from industrial and domestic water uses.” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0034425719301063

Futuristic installation co-locators like Bioreactors and Advanced Water Treatment Plants (AWTP) will be in the mix: SMWD just cut the ribbon on this one: https://www.ocregister.com/202...

In my naiveté, hubris and false optimism I wrote a whimsical column 10 years ago on global co-location strategies, and seriously felt that by now we’d already BE that future, and we’re still not even close. http://www.salem-news.com/arti...

Technologies like “atmospheric water generators” are in fact building upon millennia-old models from thirsty, isolated tribes around the globe who lived in arid regions, they’re not the stuff of science fiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

What you can bet on in America is our adventurous ingenuity, the exponential procession of scientific performance coupled with fiscal incentives.

“Water Conservation” even 5 years from now will no doubt be redefined and look nothing like it does today.

Conservation in general will include the technological innovations, the advances and implementations that amplify and improve the supply chain, reduce energy consumption, enhance storage alternatives and delivery logistics.

So having set the table, in my next chapter about the CWP, I’ll try to show that it has the potential to achieve many of this State’s expressed goals and objectives.

Roger E. Bütow is the Founder & Executive Director of Clean Water Now (previously CWN! Coalition) plus a land use analyst and regulatory compliance consultant.

"CLEAN WATER NOW (founded in 1998) is an innovative, science-based organization committed to solution-oriented collaboration as a means of developing safe, sustainable water supplies while preserving healthy and viable ecosystems."