{"id":935,"date":"2012-01-25T10:20:01","date_gmt":"2012-01-25T15:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/?p=935"},"modified":"2012-01-25T10:20:01","modified_gmt":"2012-01-25T15:20:01","slug":"the-great-gleick-on-mining-groundwater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alexprudhomme.com\/2012\/01\/25\/the-great-gleick-on-mining-groundwater\/","title":{"rendered":"the great Gleick on mining groundwater"},"content":{"rendered":"

https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/peter-h-gleick\/cadiz-project-environment_b_1228398.html
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Mining Groundwater for Profit: The Cadiz Project<\/h1>\n
Posted: 01\/24\/2012 1:36 pm<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0Dr. Peter Gleick, Pacific Institute<\/div>\n

A private company, Cadiz Inc. (Cadiz), has revived plans to mine groundwater underlying land in the delicate Eastern Mojave Desert. This project raises fundamental questions about how we manage our precious water resources, and in particular, whether in the 21st century it is appropriate, or even necessary, to use renewable water resources in a nonrenewable and unsustainable way, for short-term profit.<\/p>\n

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\nThe idea for the Cadiz project is simple: mine groundwater faster than nature refills it and sell it to urban centers in Southern California for profit. The full proposal seems more complicated — the owners might try to temporarily replace the lost groundwater with extra water from the Colorado River, if it is ever available (which is highly unlikely), but they propose to pump out this water and sell it, too, so the economics of the project really just depend on the water removed through unsustainable groundwater mining. Without that water, the project fails economically.
\nThe project is located in the desert of southern California, east of Los Angeles and San Diego, in an area with very low precipitation. The owners intend to remove at least 50,000 acre-feet of water a year (and if they can get away with it, 75,000 acre-feet per year in the early years) for 50 years and sell it to local water agencies, including the Santa Margarita Water Agency (SMWA), Three Valleys Municipal Water District, Suburban Water System, Golden State Water Company, Jurupa Community Services, and California Water Service Company. Scientists estimate that nature, in contrast, only refills the basin with around 5,000 and 32,000 acre-feet per year, with most independent estimates at the very low end. This means the groundwater levels will drop and drop, like taking more water out of a bathtub than you put in. This is, simply, unsustainable.
\nIf there were no adverse consequences of this kind of water mining, and if all that mattered was money, then perhaps using up this stock of water and turning it into a private good would make sense — at least to the project owners. But there\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>adverse consequences for other humans and for the local environment. This is cut-and-run water management: take a non-renewable resource that will last a short time, turn it for a profit, and leave a degraded landscape, mimicking the classic boom-and-bust cycles that characterized much of the mining industry in the western U.S. in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
\nHere are some of the other consequences<\/strong>:<\/p>\n