30 years ago, a corporate entity by the name of CADIZ Inc. proposed a plan to pump out 16 billion gallons of water each year from the driest desert in North America, the famed Mojave Desert. In year 2010, opposition from late activist Elden Hughs and other Sierra Club members were vigilant to keep CADIZ from realizing their plan. Almost a decade later, CADIZ Inc. had finally been approved by the Trump-era U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
Corporate entities with lobbying powers have the will to entice or pressure most anyone as was the case with Southern California Water district board member Bryan Urias, who had decided against purchasing any water from CADIZ Inc. As it appears, there are people with a conscience who can look beyond the horizon and people like Urias could see the ecological disaster from such a project to drain the Mojave Desert. However, this article really isn’t a case against CADIZ Inc, but as an example of the struggle between conservatorship and commercialism and all that entails.
The planet is dying, or the reality is the planet is becoming less inhabitable and life exist on a precarious edge of disaster. The planet will survive, and such, will eliminate us humans in the interim to do so, but we, as those humans, are helping to eliminate ourselves and so it appears we enjoy shooting ourselves in the foot and then again in the other foot.
Humans have vices, that is a given, though some humans have deeper, overwhelming obsessions with power and wealth and it is that dollar that will be used for such endeavors. And there are voices who try to speak through those filters to reach an unassuming public whom are not aware, engaged nor empowered to contribute a voice to make logical and reasonable decisions. It is a huge struggle to reach those ears, and organizations like the Sierra Club are not enough to fight the good fight.
Luckily, on September 14, 2022, a U.S. District federal judge vacated the Trump-era U.S. Bureau of Land Management decision that would have allowed Cadiz Inc. to repurpose a mothballed oil-and-gas pipeline to drain a large aquifer in the Mojave Desert. The current U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under President Biden had sent a motion to the court to dismiss the prior agency’s approval of the pipeline that would had traversed Mojave Trails National Monument and other protected public land in southeastern California.
This is life mimicking the arts. As the Death Star slowly comes around from out of the shadows to align it’s target, a small force intervenes to save the day. Message to you readers, don’t let Planet Earth become that Death Star, it won’t end well for all of us.
Sources:
https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/judge-vacates-approval-of-cadizs-california-desert-water-grab-2022-09-14/
https://socalwatersierraclub.org/campaigns/cadiz/
https://angeles.sierraclub.org/july_2019_issue
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/03/22/california-water-district-rejects-companys-proposed-desert-water-project/448264002/
Photo by Thomas Farley, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
