Tribes sue feds over renewed approval of Mojave Desert pipeline
Edvard Pettersson
LOS ANGELES (CN) — Two environmental advocacy organizations and two Native American tribes on Tuesday filed separate lawsuits to vacate the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s approval of the use of a decommissioned oil and gap pipeline across protected federal public land in the Mojave Desert for a controversial water project.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club said in their complaint filed in Los Angeles that the bureau’s decision will have a devastating impact on the fragile desert environment.
Cadiz Inc. acquired the pipeline from El Paso Natural Gas in 2011 and intends the use it for its Mojave Groundwater Bank, a project to pump water from an underground aquifer in the Mojave Desert to the company’s customers west of the desert along the California coast.
The nonprofits claim that the use of the oil and gas pipeline for water will make it possible for the company to extract far more groundwater from the desert aquifer than is replenished naturally and will cause an overdraft in the affected groundwater basin in and around Mojave Trails National Monument.
“The resulting drawdown of the water table will cause many freshwater springs of critical importance to desert plants and animals to go dry,” the nonprofits write. “The retreating aquifer will also desiccate desert ‘playa’ lakebeds, resulting in toxic air pollution from windswept sediments akin to what has plagued the Owens Valley to the north ever since large-scale water diversions to Los Angeles dried Owens Lake a century ago.”
In their complaint filed in Riverside, California, the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, along with the Native American Land Conservancy and the National Parks Conservation Association likewise argue that the project’s drawdown of the aquifer will seriously damage the groundwater-dependent ecosystem, including rare freshwater springs, seeps, and riparian areas.
“To date, the Cadiz Project’s plan to extract and transport billions of gallons of water per year, from the driest desert in North America to out-of-basin customers, thereby causing the drawdown of the aquifer, has escaped any meaningful federal review of its potentially catastrophic impacts,” the tribes claim.
Both lawsuits target the bureau’s grant of a right-of-way earlier this month for the so-called Northern Pipeline to transport water across federal lands as part of Cadiz’s Mojave Groundwater Bank venture.
A federal judge four years ago vacated a previous permit for the use of the pipeline to transport water across a 64-mile stretch that runs through federal land, including the Mojave Trail National Monument, after the bureau, then under the Biden administration, said it wanted to reconsider the decision made in the final days of the first Trump administration.
The Cadiz water project aims to extract roughly 16.3 billion gallons of groundwater every year for 50 years from aquifers north of Joshua Tree National Park. Environmental groups have been fighting the project for years, claiming it would overtax the surrounding environment.
While the Bureau of Land Management in 2022 indicated that it might have been wrong to grant the right-of-way without first assessing its environmental impact, the renewed approval this month did so again without considering the consequences for the desert ecology that relies on the underground aquifer, the plaintiffs say.
“BLM’s attempt to revive this project without public process or environmental review is another example of how the Trump administration is selling out the American people and our public lands to private industry hellbent on profiting from natural resources," Elizabeth Forsyth, an attorney with Earthjustice who represents the two nonprofits, said in a statement. “It’s like Groundhog’s Day: they still haven’t corrected the legal errors previously identified by the court, and we’re filing another lawsuit to address the same concerns.”
Both lawsuits accuse the bureau of violating the National Environmental Policy Act and the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, among other claims. The plaintiffs seek a court order setting aside the bureau’s decision.
Representatives of the U.S. Justice Department, which represents the Bureau of Land Management in litigation, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Sierra Club are represented by Earthjustice attorneys in Seattle and San Francisco.
The Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, the Native American Land Conservancy and the National Parks Conservation Association are represented by attorneys with the UC Irvine School of Law Environmental Law Clinic and with the Mills Legal Clinic at Stanford Law School.