Environmental groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Los Angeles to stop the Trump administration-approved plan for a private company to use a dormant fossil fuel pipeline to move and sell groundwater out of the Mojave Desert.
Draining desert groundwater would devastate struggling species such as the desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep and rare species of animals and plants, according to the Center for Biological Diversity, or CBD, a plaintiff in the lawsuit along with the Sierra Club.
Their LA federal court suit alleges the Bureau of Land Management’s second approval of the Cadiz Inc. water pipeline again ignores the project’s potential damages to the desert ecosystem in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws that govern the use of public lands.
“BLM’s attempt to revive this inadequately studied project 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,” plaintiffs’ attorney Elizabeth Forsyth 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.”
BLM officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pipeline cuts through Mojave Trails National Monument and other protected federal public land in southeastern California. Operating a groundwater pipeline would dry up freshwater springs that desert plants and animals need to survive, resulting in devastation for imperiled species like the desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep, the plaintiffs contend.
“The Trump administration is once again handing out favors to its cronies determined to suck the Mojave Desert dry,” Lisa Belenky, a CBD senior attorney, said in a statement. “Courts have repeatedly ruled against the Cadiz project and yet the federal government is ignoring the consequences of this disastrous groundwater pumping scheme. Desert creatures like the bighorn sheep won’t survive if key springs and seeps they need are lost. That’s why we are determined to keep fighting this ill-conceived project.”
The Cadiz plan calls for extracting much more groundwater from desert aquifers than is naturally replenished. The reduction of the water table will deplete and expose desert playa lakebeds, resulting in air pollution from windswept sediments laden with toxic heavy metals, according to the lawsuit.
In addition to the environmental devastation from pumping water out of ancient desert aquifers, converting the oil and gas pipeline for water transmission will also result in significant environmental harm prior to any groundwater pumping, the suit alleges.
Cadiz has planned extensive construction activities across public lands in the area, including bulldozed access roads, installation of pumping infrastructure and using heavy-duty equipment over a sprawling area more than 100 times larger than Disneyland, CBD reported.
“These activities will fragment desert habitat, disturb sensitive biological resources and generate significant air pollution in an area that already suffers from poor air quality,” according to the nonprofit that operates in several states including California and Arizona.
In 2021, environmental organizations sued BLM after the agency OK’d the Cadiz project in the initial Trump administration’s final days, and in 2022 a federal judge canceled the project’s approval.
CBD put a copy of the lawsuit’s court filing on the organization’s website.
