![]() Groundwater that is not used for farming at Cadiz slowly flows to hyper-saline dry lakes, where it turns salty and evaporates. Scientists estimate that this aquifer contains more than 20 million acre-feet of water, rivaling Lake Mead-the largest reservoir in the US. Located on privately owned land in the Mojave Desert, the Cadiz Water Project area overlays a massive aquifer with federally protected headwaters. Recently the Municipal Water District of Orange County evaluated supply augmentation projects available to its service area and all options were conservatively valued at more than $1000/acre-foot. Comparatively, groundwater storage provides a less costly, less impactful option that offers added flexibility and is beneficial to local communities, especially for banks that can convert surplus water into reliable supply for communities in need. Desalination, although fiercely resisted by environmentalists in some locations, has been successfully permitted in San Diego and Santa Barbara at price points of $2,150 and $3,150 per acre-foot respectively. The feasibility of design, building and financing that project is presently under intense scrutiny and without storage to regulate deliveries, it likely faces tough sledding. Meanwhile, the Delta Conveyance program to improve reliability of Bay-Delta supplies for southern California carries a price-tag of more than $15B in its current formulation. Delta protection is requiring those agencies exporting water from the Delta to make investments in reducing their reliance on exports – and this will require storage. ![]() Groundwater banking has the advantage over other supply options of being effective in a variety of settings and typically in a cost-effective manner. On a summer day, a reservoir or pond might lose about 9,000 gallons per acre of water surface.Ĭlimate change requires California to make investments in water supply reliability. The CA Department of Water Resources once estimated that California’s reservoirs and ponds generally lose 1 to 2 meters of water to evaporation every year. In California, there are limited studies on the total amount of water that evaporates from reservoirs and open-air water infrastructure. For example, the Colorado River’s largest reservoirs Lake Mead and Lake Powell lose as much as 500 billion gallons of water to evaporation annually – that’s five times more water than the city of Denver uses in one year. Groundwater banking offers a number of benefits, including minimal surface disruption, no interference with beneficial uses of surface water and little to no evaporation. The combination of the current environmental regulatory framework and limited public funding for large infrastructure projects without state and federal subsidies have made it extremely difficult to construct dams. In 2003, the Metropolitan Water District built Diamond Valley Lake, an off-stream surface storage facility which holds 800,000 acre-feet at a cost of over $2 billion. The last major dam built in Northern California was New Melones Dam in Calaveras County, in 1979, with a capacity of 2.4 million acre-feet. As the need for additional storage to accommodate changing hydrology has increased, California has largely retreated from the construction of dams as the primary water supply strategy in California due to cost and environmental concerns. Storage of water in California and the West has historically been principally obtained through the construction and operation of dams and surface reservoirs. However, this infrastructure is not always capable of providing an adequate supply of water to the state’s growing population. ![]() Over the last century, engineers built a sprawling network of reservoirs and canals to store and deliver a consistent, reliable supply of water throughout the state. “California’s water infrastructure was designed to provide protection from the fluctuations between wet and dry years that characterize its climate. An excerpt is reprinted below and a full copy of the paper is available at. (NASDAQ: CDZI) posted on its website a new white paper discussing the opportunity for groundwater storage in California. LOS ANGELES-( BUSINESS WIRE)-Today, Cadiz Inc.
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