Mojave pipeline approved despite warning it will ‘drain the desert’
A decades-old plan to move 1.25 million acre-feet of groundwater out of the Mojave Desert has cleared a major federal hurdle after the Trump administration approved a 50-year permit to convert a dormant oil and natural gas pipeline into a water conduit stretching roughly 162 miles across Southern California. … The U.S. Bureau of Land Management limited its environmental review to the pipeline conversion, excluding groundwater pumping and its potential effects on the aquifer, springs and wildlife. The agency said withdrawals would occur on private property under state and local oversight and were outside its regulatory authority. That distinction lies at the heart of the latest fight over Cadiz: The BLM reviewed the pipeline crossing federal land but not the groundwater pumping needed to supply it, or the wider impacts of that pumping on the Mojave ecosystem.
Other groundwater news:
- Monterey County Now (Seaside, Calif.): Salinas Valley officials weigh three groundwater sustainability project portfolios
