Cadiz Pipeline Permit Threatens Mojave Desert Groundwater

San Bernardino, California - Today, the leaders of California Tribes, community, and environmental organizations are highlighting their opposition to a Cadiz-Trump administration plan to extract and export groundwater from the California desert, including selling it to other states. This outcry from Californians comes as the Bureau of Land Management issued a pipeline permit for Cadiz, Inc. without conducting its legally required review of the significant groundwater depletion that the project would cause.

Cadiz, Inc., a foreign investor-backed company, has for decades attempted to gain approval for various schemes to extract and sell groundwater from underneath California’s desert. That groundwater supports California’s prized public lands in Mojave Trails National Monument and Mojave National Preserve—lands, landscapes, and waters that are sacred to Native American Tribes including the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe and the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe.

In addition to inflicting damage to these sacred resources, public lands, and wildlife, Cadiz’s proposed groundwater overdraft - 25 times the natural recharge rate of the aquifer - would offer an unreliable, unsustainable water supply to communities.

During the first Trump administration, the Bureau of Land Management granted a similar right-of-way permit to the senseless project. The permit was subsequently scrapped when a federal court ruled that the Trump administration approved the permit without required review of the Project’s groundwater pumping impacts. More recently, the company’s CEO admitted that “the Cadiz name is a poison pill” and renamed its project the Mojave Groundwater Bank. Cadiz’s subsidiary, Fenner Gap Mutual Water Company, also hired the lobbying firm of David Bernhardt, Secretary of Interior in the first Trump administration and corporate board member at Trump Media Truth Social.

In June of 2025, the Trump administration also announced plans to sign an agreement aimed at helping Cadiz sell the scarce California desert water to other states. Following this announcement, Cadiz entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with an out-of-state utility company to market the water to Arizona off-takers, but the State of Arizona’s Water Infrastructure Finance Authority voted in November 2025 to reject funding the project. The company faces significant opposition in California despite the Trump administration’s attempts to bolster it.

Governor Gavin Newsom announced his opposition to the Cadiz project while running for office in 2018 and signed legislation a year later to block Cadiz and safeguard desert water, saying at the time: “What has flowed underneath the Mojave for thousands of years, sustaining the Native Americans, bighorn sheep, the threatened desert tortoise and a variety of other plant and animal life…. Prior to allowing any project to move forward there must be certainty that it not threaten the important natural and cultural resources.”

California’s federal and state representatives have also weighed in significantly on the issue. U.S. Senators Padilla and Schiff sent a letter to the Department of the Interior, noting “the significant and irreversible impacts that Cadiz’s project could have on federal lands and surrounding communities,” and U.S. Representative Raul Ruiz highlighted how the project would exacerbate the Colorado River crisis, stating that the “Cadiz proposal is also dangerously inconsistent with efforts to develop reliable and sustainable water supplies for communities.” State Senator Monique Limón and Assemblymember Isaac Bryan also sent a joint letter to the members of the State Lands Commission highlighting that Cadiz has for decades “threatened our treasured California desert with an unsustainable water extraction scheme.” State Controller Malia Cohen, Chair of the California State Lands Commission that unanimously rejected Cadiz’s lease application in 2024, highlighted the financial risk, stating “I’m not willing to gamble with taxpayers’ money.”

Cadiz has also faced sustained opposition from conservation, clean water, and environmental justice organizations that advocate for communities and the environment.

Statement from Chance Wilcox, California Desert Associate Director at the National Parks Conservation Association

“The facts are clear. This groundwater mining proposal would drain the desert and rob the Mojave of its rare springs and wildlife habitat. It’s indefensible that the Trump administration would once again try to revive the pointless Cadiz project, by defying decades of scientific warnings and refusing to conduct an environmental review of the groundwater mining. "Though proposed decades ago, Cadiz hasn’t been built because California’s leaders, from senators and governors to scientific agencies, have been quite clear that this project would have devastating impacts.”

Below are statements from California Tribal, community, and environmental leaders in response to the Bureau of Land Management’s announcement:

• Daniel Leivas, Chairman of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe: “Our people have been here since time immemorial, and we will not allow the Cadiz Corporation to destroy the living landscapes that preserve and teach our traditional ways. We thank Governor Newsom and state agencies for taking actions to block Cadiz so we save water for our children and grandchildren, and that needs to continue. In this fight for indigenous rights and cultural survival, our Tribe is resolved to stop Cadiz once and for all. Ocean woman is the great spirit of all water. The cycle and flow of the Living spirit of water within all the trees, plants, people, animals, land and sky have been present since time immemorial. The ancient Waters that formed and shaped the land we know today rest within the Earth below Cadiz. It is the living heart of the desert; to drain it would be to drain the life out of the entire desert. No profit is worth such desecration.”

• Timothy Williams, Chairman of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe: “This is the Mojave Desert, and we are the Mojave people, the caretakers of this land, water and wildlife since time immemorial. Our Tribe has a solemn, sacred relationship with these resources that Cadiz, Inc., a foreign investor-backed company, is targeting for exploitation and profit. Their plan to pump and sell 25 times more groundwater each year than the aquifer can replenish would desecrate our traditional territories and any community sold this water would be left with an unreliable, unsustainable supply. Science and commonsense makes clear that pumping more groundwater than is sustainably replenished is not only negligent, but dangerous to the American Desert Southwest. This is why stopping Cadiz is crucial for all those who need real, reliable water solutions.”

• Dolores Huerta, civil rights leader and President of the Dolores Huerta Foundation: “The truth is, Cadiz hasn’t kept its story straight. They’ve promised water to wealthy Angelenos and others, and now it’s Arizona. Yet they haven’t delivered on those promises. The government should not have even considered this request, much less grant any permit. Cadiz spells destruction for water, sacred lands, and the desert economy. Cadiz is a threat to all creatures great and small and the core values of protecting our parks and environment from irreplaceable ruin, all in the name of profit. It is exactly this type of greed and injustice that I have dedicated my life to oppose.”

• Ana Gonzalez, Executive Director, Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice: “As an organization working with frontline communities, we have worked towards stopping the dubious and dangerous Cadiz project. The water supply for people in the Inland Region and High Desert must be clean and sustainable; Cadiz is neither. Robbing a precious and sacred landscape of its water to profit off of disadvantaged communities is an outrage and a disgusting form of environmental racism.”

• Esperanza Vielma, Board Chair of the Environmental Justice Coalition for Water: “Cadiz would swindle frontline communities into an unreliable source of water. It would worsen environmental injustices while damaging California’s precious resources. A glance at environmental justice principles — including protecting tribal ancestral homelands and providing clean, reliable water — shows that Cadiz fails on their face and on every point.”

• Hans Johnson, East Area Progressive Democrats, the largest Democratic Club in California, which led grassroots efforts in California to pass and enact the 2019 state Desert Protection Act (SB 307): “Americans who support parks, a thriving tourist economy, and honest government have defeated Cadiz and its ecological disaster for decades. The scheme by the water-pumping company to plunder the eastern Mojave Desert for private profit defies common sense and the will of Californians. Cadiz’s elitist power play with their cronies in the most anti-environment federal administration ever inflicts a massive environmental injustice on all Americans, who own these public lands. And, as before, it will be stopped again.”

• Linda Castro, Assistant Policy Director, CalWild: “Cadiz, Inc. has aggressively pursued every angle imaginable to make its water pumping project a reality, despite the harm it would cause to the region’s sensitive ecological and cultural values and the known high levels of carcinogenic chemicals in the water. But, no amount of spin or repackaging can change what the Cadiz water pumping project has always been and always will be: an incredibly ill-conceived plan to syphon destructive amounts of water from the heart of the Mojave Desert and sell it for maximum profit.”

• Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples (SPI): “Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples (SPI) stands in solidarity with Sacred Water and the Tribal Nations who oppose the Cadiz project and whose lands and waters will be directly impacted by the continued colonial extraction and abuse of Water. The Cadiz Project impedes on the Rights of Nature as it relates to Indigenous jurisprudence and does not adhere to the principles of Free Prior and Informed Consent. The proposed Cadiz project is contrary to SPI’s fundamental principles that center water as a living entity, a sacred element, a spirit, and a guardian that provides life to all living beings, ranging from microorganisms to plant and animal life to human life.”

• Bruce Reznik, Executive Director, Los Angeles Waterkeeper: “The proposed Cadiz project will hurt Californians. The amount of water Cadiz wants to pump is not sustainable, making this an expensive and short-lived plan for extracting water. We should prioritize our investments in the many sustainable local water supply options available to us.”

• Garry Brown, Founder & President, Orange County Coastkeeper/ Inland Empire Waterkeeper: “Overdrafting a desert aquifer of ancient water for short-term profitability is a disastrous policy. Causing harm to this Mojave Desert natural resource must be opposed at all levels of government. It simply makes no sense!”

• Agustin Cabrera, Deputy Director of Programs and Policy, Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE): “As an organization rooted in South Central and led by Black and Brown communities, we stand in solidarity with Tribal Nations and the protection of our ecosystems. We support Tribal Nations in their fight for water justice and the defense of their sacred, ancestral lands. Cadiz is bad for people: Californians need water sources that are both reliable and affordable—and Cadiz is neither. The amount of water Cadiz seeks to pump is unsustainable, deepening environmental and economic injustices by selling communities an unreliable supply.”

• Margarita Lopez-Pelayo, Senior Program Director, Conservation Lands Foundation: “The Bureau of Land Management’s announcement to move forward with the Cadiz water project has created the greatest and most urgent threat to available water resources for the people and wildlife who depend on the Mojave Trails National Monument and the southern California desert landscapes. We wholly oppose efforts by a private company to trick Californians into handing over their access to ancient groundwater from one of the most culturally and biologically significant springs in the Mojave. We stand in solidarity with the Fort Mojave and Chemehuevi Tribes to defend the lifeblood of the California Desert and call on California elected officials to do the same.”

• Ileene Anderson, Senior Scientist/CA Desert Director, Center for Biological Diversity: “The Cadiz project has been recognized for decades as an environmental disaster that would drain an ancient desert aquifer that is critical to sustain life-giving desert springs, seeps, and water sources for wildlife and local residents. We’ll continue our fight to stop this ill-conceived zombie project.”

• Bryan Baker, Chair of Mojave Group, Sierra Club: “Cadiz has claimed to be a water-storage project for many years, recently rebranding itself as the savior of disadvantaged communities and an Environmental & Social Justice private company. The Cadiz water-mining scheme would rob the Mojave Desert springs of water that are vital to wildlife, such as desert bighorn sheep, would infringe upon the rights of Tribal Nations to defend their ancestral lands. This is a limited source of water, and any continued depletion of that ancient aquifer would be unsustainable.”

• Drew Ready, Senior Manager, Council for Watershed Health: “Cadiz has long sought to put financial gain from stock dividends and water sales above public health and safety of desert communities, tribal nations, and ecosystems. Community voices speaking out against Cadiz are right to protest this taking of groundwater. This use of precious desert water will result in the decimation of natural desert springs and will take needed water from the endangered desert tortoise, bighorn sheep, fringe-toed lizards, kit fox, and countless other desert residents. The project exploits faults in California’s groundwater law that let a landowner mine the water resources below and beyond the land. Cadiz will not result in water conservation or equity, but the opposite, the depletion of an essential community resource, life-giving water.”

• Howard Penn, Executive Director, Planning and Conservation League: “California’s desert lands and communities are at risk. Instead of wasting public money draining critical, rare, and culturally important springs, we must invest in real and enduring water solutions. This attack is a harmful and expensive distraction from the climate adaptations Californians need.”

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