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Fighting Cadiz Makes Homes Less Affordable

The following article, appearing under the title “We Prefer to Waste Water,” was authored by Borre Winckel, president and chief executive officer of the Building Industry Association of San Diego.

California’s record high housing costs track both its high population growth rate and the continued low volume production of new housing units. This post posits that the latter could be by design.  One would assume that having enough shelter available for the peeps is the State’s top policy priority, along with the Climate Change fight and higher minimum wages.  These policy aims should not be mutually exclusive.  Not in a State run by one political party.  What’s the point of stopping melting polar caps with more money in your pocket if it still can’t buy you a place to live?

  • Yet our leading federal, state and local law makers seem to excel in creating “we-didn’t-think-it-through” type road blocks that deny rather than offer a much needed and long overdue housing shortage fix.   The latest example of stonewalling the region’s thirst for new roofs comes courtesy of the Bureau of Land Management, a.k.a. BLM. This Federal Agency is actively blocking the creation of an entire new alternative water supply for drought-stricken Southern California. The new water source is the Cadiz Water Project. It’s a pipeline proposal to convey water – which would otherwise evaporate – from private property in San Bernardino to multiple water providers throughout Southern California. If approved, 400,000 people would benefit annually.

That could also mean 100,000 – 250,000 new housing units that would not be taking water from existing, already strained water resources. I make this point quite deliberately, because using “someone else’s water” is the first line No-Growthers use to halt new development.  So the Cadiz Water Project would make perfect sense, right?  Not so fast, says BLM.  On October 2nd, BLM informed Members of Congress that Cadiz may not install its water line in a 43-mile long section inside a 200-foot wide right-of-way held by the Arizona and California Rail Road.  Cadiz plans it water pipeline there to avoid disturbing the fragile eco-system of the desert.  Its proposed location offers a host of other common sense benefits, several directly relevant to the rail road.  But, BLM issued its “IXNAY” to the water pipe project, because it “does not derive from or further a railroad purpose.”  

Nonsense, click: http://www.water4socal.com/ to see why.

BLM’s move to block the creation of an attractive new water source is entirely inspired by the predictable forces who oppose pragmatic solutions that would solve, say, a chronic housing shortage problem. As a Federal agency it is apparently not concerned about facilitating a viable new source of water that would – otherwise evaporate and – benefit the people of Southern California.   New water (means that it) will have a “growth inducing effect.”  That’s California speak for an opportunity to oppose.  The irony is that the number one solution to high housing costs is more production and alternatively sourced water is part of that equation.  So Cadiz shall be opposed, just like desalinization plants are fought tooth and nail.  Expect the State’s policy makers to continue to lament our high housing costs but do virtually nothing meaningful to alleviate its causes.  Ordinarily BLM would not have opposed Cadiz were it not that State actors and its NGO-adherents put them up to it.  How is this not a giant case of water wasting?

And here you thought that BLM only fought ranchers and off roaders!

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