Water District Board Members Mike Ti and Jody Roberto Can End Rigged Study Promoting Desert-Damaging Water Project

The Cadiz corporation helped put a little-known water district in eastern LA County on the map -- but not for any reason the district would want. The Three Valleys Municipal Water District has been exposed by the Sierra Club, tribal leaders, and local ratepayers for rigging an $805,000 study of the Cadiz water mining project’s environmental impacts in favor of the corporation.

 

Sierra Club staff and volunteers at Bonanza Springs. Senate Bill 307 passed two years ago, requiring projects like Cadiz to meet high state environmental standards. Cadiz needs the biased Three Valleys study of its water project to give it a longshot chance of obtaining state permission to operate. Photo credit Chris Clarke.

Cadiz hopes to mine 50,000 acre feet of water a year from an ancient aquifer under the Mojave Desert near Joshua Tree National Park. This would lower the water table and destroy springs on which wildlife depend in the arid desert environment. Drought and climate change will accelerate this effect. The Cadiz water contains Chromium 6, a carcinogen that is expensive to remove. Cadiz water is likely to push up water rates, disproportionately impacting low income water customers.

 

Over the objection of the Sierra Club and scores of local ratepayers, in February 2020 the Three Valleys board authorized the Bonanza Springs Study ostensibly to determine if the Cadiz water mining project would impact desert springs. Cadiz funded the study and provided longtime Cadiz project advocate Anthony Brown for the district to use as its consultant.  That the study was so obviously rigged did not bother the largely conservative, pro-Cadiz board. Three Valleys' barely hidden agenda was to help Cadiz prepare to make its longshot application to the State of California for permission to operate and to refute scientific studies that showed that Cadiz would fatally harm desert water sources. 

 

Since the bogus study was authorized, almost nothing has gone right for Brown, Cadiz, or Three Valleys. Mr. Brown’s consulting firm, Aquilogic, has accomplished little since it has been unable to obtain the federal permits needed to bring equipment near the fragile desert springs. As word of the rigged nature of the study spreads, the Bureau of Land Management may never issue the permits. This stalled study, a turnover of board members in the November 2020 election, and pressure from the Sierra Club and its allies has given board members the opportunity to reconsider whether they really want the study fiasco to continue. 

 

All eyes will be on water district board members Jody Roberto and Mike Ti at the upcoming Three Valleys board meeting at 8 a.m. on October 6th. Both are thought to support ending the study, but they have declined to take a position publicly. “Mike and Jody are smart and articulate people,” said Sierra Club activist Robin Smith. “But silence is acquiescence to the status quo of continuing the study.” Ms. Roberto declined comment for this story and Mr. Ti did not respond.

 

Three Valleys board member Jody Roberto has so far refused to comment on efforts by the Three Valleys water district to rig an environmental study.

At  board meetings for the last eighteen months the Sierra Club and its allies have demanded that the rigged study be stopped. In the November 2020 election two pro-Cadiz board members were ousted and replaced by progressives Mike Ti and Danielle Soto. Ms. Soto and veteran board member Carlos Goytia have already spoken out against the study. “Danielle and Carlos are my heroes,” said Sierra Club member Joan Holtz. “If Mike and Jody join them, the study will end.”

 

Board member Daniele Soto objected to the water district using a Cadiz-selected consultant to oversee a study of the Cadiz water project.

Several board members have dropped hints that some unspecified action concerning the study is taking place in private. In a recent letter to several Sierra Club members, Mike Ti seemed to confirm this by referring to “apparent board inaction on the study” [italics added]. If the board is working on a secret strategy to continue or exit the study, California’s open meeting law (the Brown Act) requires that board discussions and decisions be made public. It is improper for the board to concoct a plan in secret even if this approach might appeal to some board members like Ms. Roberto who has many conservative friends who support the Cadiz project. 

 

Three Valleys' penchant for secrecy and rigging studies to help Cadiz has gotten the board in trouble before. In late 2019, without revealing it to the public, the district secretly accepted $100,000 from Cadiz to conduct a pro-Cadiz study of the project’s monitoring plan with the consultants Cadiz wanted, including lead consultant Anthony Brown. 

 

“We are concerned that Mike Ti and Jody Roberto are getting caught up in the district’s continuing lack of transparency when it comes to the study,” commented the National Park Conservation Association’s Neal Desai. “Mike and Jody need to help stop the district’s backroom dealings and speak out forcefully to end the study.” 

 

Cadiz needs help to have any chance of having the state authorize its project because of a recently passed law that the Sierra Club championed. Cadiz cannot pump groundwater unless it can convince state agencies that its project will not harm natural or cultural resources, wildlife or watersheds. One major problem for Cadiz is that the state already determined the project will inflict damage. The Department of Fish and Wildlife has warned Cadiz about the agency’s concern that the water project will harm desert springs and threaten the desert bighorn sheep population. Cadiz had said it will wait to submit its application to the state until the Three Valleys Bonanza Springs Study is completed. Now that Cadiz has been exposed as funding a rigged environmental study, its effort could backfire. 

 

Migratory desert bighorn sheep depend on water from Bonanza Spring to survive. The Cadiz water mining project would lower the water table and devastate the springs. The upper springs is shown here. Photo credit: John Monsen.

Word is also out about study lead consultant and Cadiz ally Anthony Brown. The consultant wrote an op-ed supporting the project, and he was long listed on the Cadiz website as a project supporter -- until the Sierra Club pointed it out. He served as a reviewer of a 2018 Cadiz study that claimed no harm to Bonanza Springs, agreeing with the entire Cadiz in-house report. During the month leading up to the board’s February 2020 vote to have Mr. Brown lead the district’s Bonanza Springs study, his gross conflict of interest was pointed out in detail during public comment over seventy-five times. 

 

Given the blowback from the study fiasco, in March 2021 board President and longtime Cadiz supporter Bob Kuhn promised there would be an up or down vote on whether to continue the study. He suggested it would occur the following month. This vote never took place. Instead the district launched its secret effort, as yet unspecified, regarding the study. 

 

Three Valleys services Diamond Bar, Claremont, Glendora and Pomona. 

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John Monsen is a former Los Angeles Sierra Club National Field staff member. He was presented a 2017 Chapter Extraordinary Achievement Award in part for his effort to help establish the San Gabriel Mountains National Monument. As Vice Chair of the Political Committee last year he led an effort that replaced three conservative water board members with progressive people of color. He is heading up the Stop Cadiz effort for the Angeles Chapter Water Committee.