Is Rancho Santa Margarita’s Water District (SMWD) Cadiz Project Orange County’s California Bullet Brain?

Posted By CotoBlogzz

Rancho Santa margarita, CA. – As public opposition to the SMWD’s  Cadiz Water Project grows, the district’s response has been to attempt to influence public opinion using television advertising.

Critics of the project. including the Citizens for Responsible Water Policies’ are concerned that this project will raise water rates by as much as 35 percent, and harm the environment.

While many of the same critics  were planning to attend the District’s  Board meeting scheduled to take place on Wednesday, June 27, 2012, the Board of Directors, cancelled the meeting.

The cancelled meeting did not seat well with Citizens for Responsible Water Policies’ John McClendon, who states in the group’s website:   “It’s outrageous that our elected Water Board would rather cancel its monthly meeting than hear ratepayers voice concerns and opposition to the Cadiz project.  Actions like this only add to the district’s growing reputation for backroom deals. The Board is already accused of meeting in secret to consider the project in violation of the state’s open meeting laws and failing to take into account the full costs of purchasing water from Cadiz. Now that we ratepayers are paying attention to this failed process the Board goes and creates even more secrecy. As the elected directors of a public utility, they need to remember that they answer to the ratepayers of South Orange County and not the owners of a private water company in San Bernardino County.” 

The Citizens for Responsible Water Policies web site includes a brief history of the project highlighting several issues, including:

• Cadiz intends to withdraw more water every year than nature puts back in the ground, lowering the groundwater table and depleting aquifers.
• There are a number of questions surrounding alleged back room deals between Cadiz, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors and the Santa Margarita Water District.
• SMWD is one of several water districts under investigation for engaging in as many as 30 secret meetings to advance the Cadiz proposal. And, SMWD voted to approve a letter of intent to negotiate with Cadiz a full year before the first public discussion of the project. The San Bernardino County board of supervisors also voted to give Cadiz an exemption from the county’s desert groundwater ordinance.
• The newly proposed water project by Cadiz is a terribly flawed proposal that will be catastrophic to not only the Mojave National Preserve, but also to South Orange County residents who will have to foot an enormous bill.

Given that the Southern California real estate market is under water, perhaps it behooves Orange County residents to take a deep breath and take a closer looks at the Cadiz Project to make sure it does not turn into Orange County’sCalifornia Bullet Brain?

We have tried to contact representatives from the SMWD to respond to the allegations contained in the Citizens for Responsible Water Policies web site and will report our findings.

RELATED STORIES
The common purse: Posas/ Cadiz

http://chanceofrain.com/2012/05/the-common-purse-las-posas-cadiz/

A previous post, Rancho Santa Margarita, Meet Calleguas, hit a hornet’s nest. The decision to write it was little more than an instinct. “Poke there.”  The post referred to something called the “Las Posas Basin Aquifer Storage and Recovery Project,” described by the Los Angeles Times during the project’s inception in the 1990s as “the largest reservoir in Ventura County, ensuring a reliable water supply in cities from Simi Valley to Oxnard in the event of drought or earthquake.”


What the Cadiz Water Plan is and Why it Needs to be Stopped

http://www.kcet.org/updaily/socal_focus/commentary/opposition-mounts-to-cadiz-water-plan.html

by Chris Clarke
on June 28, 2012 12:10 PM


Cadiz water project in dispute

http://www.desertdispatch.com/articles/county-13094-cadiz-water.html
Mining company sues county
San Bernardino County faces litigation over its preliminary approval of a controversial water project in the Fenner Valley, about 100 miles east of Barstow.







COMMENTS


Cadiz facts
Submitted by Anonymous on Mon, 2012-07-16 10:21.
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Coto residents should seek the facts on this project, not what's presented here. Buzz is parroting the messages of a Texas oil service company that mines fracking compounds near the Cadiz property, not the facts. I suggest you read the materials at SMWD.com or the Cadiz site, Water4SoCal.com for accurate info. For starters, the project would stabilize rates, not cause them to increase, and the only entity "investigating" SMWD for secret meetings is a left-wing blog/newspaper. Also, as is prominently noted on the TV ad, Cadiz is paying for the ad, not SMWD.
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