California’s Groundwater Regime: The Cadiz Case

Julia Sizek

doi:10.3390/resources7010007

Abstract

Recent California legislation has promised solutions to longstanding problems in groundwater management through an emphasis on management of groundwater itself, rather than on the rights of overlying property owners. In this short communication, I argue that the promises of scientific management relies on property law and jurisdiction and therefore that scientific claims about the water itself are less important than private property claims in the case of a Cadiz Inc.’s proposed groundwater extraction project in Southeastern California. While private property in land insulates Cadiz Inc. (Los Angeles, CA, USA) from political contestation, opposition to the project has increasingly focused on the right to transport and transfer water through lands not held by Cadiz Inc. This legal strategy points to how California groundwater law is still fundamentally ruled by private property in land, which shifts the grounds of environmental politics from extraction itself to the transport of extracted materials. This case serves as a good example of the intersection of political ecology and legal geography.

Highlights

California depends on groundwater: 50% of water used in the state comes from underground stores
In more than 20 interviews I conducted in the summer and fall of 2017 with residents of the Morongo Basin, East Mojave Desert, and Barstow, most locals adhered to a similar narrative: they oppose the project as a profitable “water grab” for Cadiz Inc. that would subsidize irresponsible water use by coastal Californians to the detriment of a fragile desert ecology
Property law is both the central tool Cadiz Inc. has in protecting their groundwater extraction plans and their chief enemy as they attempt to convey the water through the desert to the Colorado

Summary

Introduction

California depends on groundwater: 50% of water used in the state comes from underground stores. Matching management scale to hydrologic scale promises to reshape groundwater management from property boundaries to scientific ones rather than the politics of overlying owners [5] This short communication examines this central promise of SGMA—that groundwater itself can be centered in debates about proposed extraction, rather than the property rights of overlying owners. Through examining a legal contestation and public discourse around a proposed groundwater project in Southeastern California, this short communication argues that California groundwater policy is ruled by private property rights, not by scientific management practices. I discuss how groundwater transport has become the primary site of contestation over the project, and the ways that this reinforces private property regimes

Background

The Contested Science of the Groundwater Basin

Pipeline Politics

Findings

Conclusion