The San Bernardino county Board of Supervisors, after 5 hours of hearing on the Groundwater Management, Monitoring, and Mitigation Plan (GMMMP) for the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project, voted 4 to 1 to accept the plan as presented.

    The project involves the free transfer of county water to the applicant, Cadiz, Inc., that is expected to sell the water for $1-billion to $2-billion.  The county doesn't receive anything.

    San Bernardino county First District supervisor, Brad Mitzelfelt, whose district the project is located, claimed that the removal of the water would create new jobs and protect against future shortages of imported aqueduct water.  The export of the water would primarily protect counties other than San Bernardino; that would lose the water.

    This represents the largest corruption and rip-off of the citizens of San Bernardino county ever!  Postmus and Crossroads are very small in scale in comparison to this massive giveaway of the desert's most valuable asset — water.

Brad Mitzelfelt   Janice Rutherford   Gary Ovitt   Josie Gonzales

Neil Derry

    Two important events happened on this date.

    (1)  The County of San Bernardino Board of Supervisors, in shameful defiance to the will and best interests of their constitutents, approved the GMMMP as shown above; and

    (2)  Ruth Musser-Lopez, representing the River Branch of the Archaeological Heritage Association (RiverAHA), voluntarily withdrew the only federal litigation against Cadiz, Inc., the County of San Bernardino, its Board, and a number of federal departments in regards to the Cadiz water project.

    Four other related lawsuits against the Cadiz project continue in State courts.

    Following Musser-Lopez's withdrawal, Cadiz, Inc. released a nationally circulated false public statement four days later.

    The Cadiz story was headlined: "Federal Court Dismisses Case Against Cadiz Inc. - Action Eliminates Federal Court Litigation involving the Company."  Cadiz further wrote:  "The Court determined that Petitioner RiverAHA was unlikely to succeed on the merits.  The dismissal now ends the pending Federal Court litigation..."

    The headlines and quoted sentences are blatantly false and untrue; leading the public to a false understanding that important legal issues have been resolved.  This can lead readers to bad business investments based upon the misrepresentations.

    The federal court did not dismiss the case as stated by Cadiz, Inc.; the plaintiffs voluntarily withdrew the case before arguments on the merits were heard.  The court had informed the plaintiffs that they did not have jurisdiction as the plaintiffs' cited federal law now contains a requirement for the exhaustion of administrative remedies.

    The withdrawal does not "eliminate" federal court litigation as directly implied by Cadiz, Inc. because the plaintiffs' withdrawal was without prejudice; the court allowed the plaintiffs to resubmit the case immediately after the exhaustion of administrative remedies.

    Furthermore, the court did not determine "that Petitioner RiverAHA was unlikely to succeed on the merits" as falsely stated by Cadiz, Inc., as the court never heard the merits as the action was strategically withdrawn beforehand.

    The plaintiffs expect to eventually refile (if necessary) and win on all the merits because the strong merits are based upon long established federal law.

    Cadiz, Inc.'s willful and self-serving misstatements of fact to apparently misguide potential investors has publicly defamed, ridiculed and tarnished the good character of the plaintiffs as submitting a non-meritorious case before the court.

    During a regular scheduled board meeting, the MWA board failed to pass, by a split vote, a resolution opposing the Cadiz water project.  Opposition to the Cadiz project required a YES vote.

Kimberly Cox - YES    District 1   Jim Ventura - YES    District 2   Beverly Lowry - YES    District 6   Mike Page - NO    District 4   Art Bishop - NO    District 5   Doug Shumway - NO    District 7   Richard Hall - ABSENT    District 3

    An excuse given for not supporting the motion is that the Cadiz project is outside of the Mojave Water Agency's boundary.  Apparently, the board members holding this position have no problem with another water agency in Orange County reaching outside of its jurisdiction to steal water from San Bernardino County; but lets not have a local water agency go on record against it.

    These three spineless 'No' voters, as well as the no-show, need to be removed from office.

    It is reported that a weaker "letter of concern" about the Cadiz project might be prepared by the board.

Posted: July 31, 2012

      The Santa Margarita Water District Board of Directors on July 31, 2012 unanimously approved and certified the Cadiz water project's Final Environmental Impact Report.

      The project still has a number of hurdles; the largest being two lawsuits filed by Tetra Technologies.  Additional litigation may also be filed by conservation groups following the FEIR's certification.

Posted: July 26, 2012

    The Santa Margarita Water District Board of Directors surprised many at their July 25, 6:30 P.M. board meeting that ended this morning at about 12:47 A.M.

    The Board, that was expected to approve the Cadiz Final EIR, continued the decision until July 31, 2012.

      Although the invited public comments were overwhelmingly in favor of the proposed project, the opponents presented significant reasons why the proposal should not to be approved.

    Questions were raised over the viability of Cadiz, Inc. since it has never had a profitable year since it started and that it has lost millions of dollars; and whether the company would later be in existence to handle the liabilities of the proposed project that it has openly assumed.

    Questions were raised over a reported FBI and Exchange investigation on Cadiz, Inc. dealings.

    Furthermore, questions were raised by local water district rate payers who didn't want to be burden by the cost of protracted legal lawsuits and by water that has been reported to contain unhealthly levels of Chromium-6.

    Debbie Cook, an activist opponent, presented an alliance list of individuals inside Cadiz, Inc. and the water district that have financial interests in the project's approval.  Cook questioned whether the board was receiving unbiased legal and staff recommendations.

    The National Park Service recommend non-approval at this time.  It was presented with the FEIR within the previous ten days and had not had the time required to respond to many complex items.

    Should the project dry the land and create air pollution, and if Cadiz, Inc. was insolvent, the water district may be held liable.  The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has spent over $1.2 billion in federally mandated dust remediation for the Owens lakebed.

Nov. 1, 2012 - Debt update. Is Cadiz mining a hole for itself?

StockTwits on CDZI.

Cadiz, Inc. 5-year price chart.

Shares dropped sharply after the previous water grab attempt.  Despite the recent Santa Margarita
Water District and County of San Bernardino approvals, there hasn't been a rush of project investors.


      "Bad ideas are not uncommon."  - Clint Eastwood Is CDZI (Cadiz, Inc.) a sucker's stock?     •     Cadiz, Inc. exerts pressure upon the MWA. Fred Stearn's comments. (1MB PDF) or (12MB higher quality PDF)     •     The Smirking Chimp Et Snell's presentation to Santa Margarita Water District.     •     "Nonsustainable !"

Cadiz Inc. Message Board (Yahoo! Finance) - Pre-SMWD certification. Something about this controversy over water rights smells...     ∗     Desert News (2011) Serial lying and exaggeration seems to be a hallmark of the proposed water project. (KCET) Chromium-6  (hexavalent chromium, a carcinogen)



The Cadiz water project appears as a financial house-of-cards
with SMWD operating at a loss and Cadiz, Inc. reportedly
unprofitable for decades.  Despirate people in desperate
times call for a desperate project.



Myth: "Cadiz still owns the water assets of the program -- "
No, the wells may be on Cadiz property, but most of the water
drawn by the proposed pumping will be sucked from under land
controlled by federal stewardship.  This groundwater asset
belongs to the people of the state of California.



"Doesn't this constitute a conflict of interest under California Law...
for a (so-called) permitting authority to have a vested interest,
in partnership with, be a participant with a private enterprise
on something that they are to vote on?"     -  Ruth Lopez



"...a struggling private water company in Orange County collaborated with
a British felon in search of personal fortune to purchase San Bernardino
County's support for a project that is bad for the residents of
San Bernardino County."   -  Dr. Karen Tracy



" they set not God before their eyes "   -  Psalm 54:3

CadizWater.com is a Free Speech, not-for-profit grassroots project of conservationists opposed to the proposed Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery, and Storage Project.     Our mission is to alert citizens of this viewed corrupt giveaway of their public assets.  Statements expressed within CadizWater.com or attached links are the opinion of the individual author(s).  Should you have an interest in supporting this movement, now is the time.  Please contact: us at: newberrysprings @ hotmail.com

Did you find an error or have an opinion?  Let us know. e-mail address:
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