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Cadiz Inc. has announced that the company’s Water Conservation, Recovery & Storage Project (Cadiz Water Project), based in California’s high desert, has earned the support of the California Chamber of Commerce (CalChamber), the state’s largest business advocacy group. The Cadiz Water Project is a public-private partnership with local water providers to deliver a new, reliable water supply across seven Southern California counties.
“The Cadiz Project fits within the policy principals of the CalChamber to support a comprehensive solution to California’s chronic water shortage,” a recent CalChamber letter read. “The increase in water supplies and the economic benefits are compelling. Southern California needs projects like this one to diversify its long term water supply while at the same time reducing reliance on imported water and providing for more local groundwater storage.”
The Cadiz Water Project is designed to conserve groundwater presently lost to evaporation and high-salinity in the Mojave Desert’s Cadiz Valley and deliver it to Southern California communities. Over the 50-year term of the project, an average of 50,000 acre-feet of water per year, enough for 400,000 people, will be delivered across the region in compliance with a comprehensive, state-of-the-art groundwater management program that will be enforced by San Bernardino County.
In a second phase, the project would store up to one million acre-feet of imported water for use in future dry years. The Company developed the Cadiz Water Project in partnership with the Santa Margarita Water District (SMWD), Orange County’s second largest water agency, and will provide water for SMWD and to water providers throughout Southern California.
“The express support of the Cadiz Project by the CalChamber, as well as the strong embrace of our economic benefits and ability to grow water supplies in the middle of an extended drought, provides powerful momentum to our effort to complete our remaining milestones, said Scott Slater, Cadiz President and CEO, in a statement. The backing of California’s largest and most powerful broad-based business advocate to government is a golden affirmation of our mission to deliver reliable water to 400,000 people and we are grateful for the support.”
CalChamber, a not-for-profit organization, has membership that represents one-quarter of the private sector jobs in California, including firms of all sizes and companies from every industry within the state. Leveraging front-line knowledge of laws and regulations, CalChamber provides products and services to help businesses comply with both federal and state laws.
The Cadiz Water Project was reviewed and then approved in 2012 in accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Earlier this summer, CEQA approvals were sustained by the California Court of Appeal in six sweeping opinions in favor of the project. With legal review exhausted, the Company and its supporters are working to finalize arrangements to convey water from Cadiz via a pipeline to the Colorado River Aqueduct and then into the service areas of project partners and participants.
