Fellow Dems,
On Thursday, April 15, the PVDC voted to send a letter to Three Valleys Municipal Water District in opposition to the proposed Cadiz Project study. You may download the signed letter at the link at the bottom of the page. The text of the letter reads as follows:
Dear President Kuhn and Three Valleys Board Members,
On behalf of the Pomona Valley Democratic Club, I write this letter to the Three Valleys Board of Directors to express the Club’s opposition to the Three Valley’s biased study of the proposed Cadiz Water Mining Project, and urge you to take prompt action to exit this effort that the Cadiz Corporation is using for public relations.
The Club has numerous concerns over the decisions made by Three Valleys and Cadiz in the development of this study, including the hiring of Aquilogic, a Cadiz advocate, to lead the study. We are also aware of the strong tribal opposition to this study that promotes a project that tribes have long argued will harm a sacred landscape.
Aquilogic’s founder and CEO Anthony Brown has demonstrated years of allegiance to Cadiz. Brown has publicly shown his support for the corporation on numerous occasions, and was even listed as a project supporter on the Cadiz website. For almost a decade, Brown has unequivocally and unwaveringly claimed that the project would not harm Bonanza Springs or its underlying aquifers, despite independent, peer-reviewed studies and findings from state and federal scientists showing the project would deeply harm the habitat and Indigenous cultural sacred sites. We do not expect unbiased results from Mr. Brown, and we believe that continuing the study is a major misstep in ethics.
We urge the Board to take prompt action to exit the study process, as a way to maintain the integrity of the communities the district represents. If Cadiz wants to pursue its project, it should initiate the independent project review process established by SB 307 (Roth), which requires state agencies to assess the project’s impacts on desert ecosystems, as well as impacts on Indigenous Sacred cultural sites, and determine if the project will cause any adverse impacts. If it does cause these impacts, the project cannot proceed. SB 307, which advances environmental, indigenous, and environmental justice policies, was supported by our local leaders such as Asm. Freddie Rodriguez, Asm. Chris Holden, Sen Connie Leyva and Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis.
As members of the Democratic Club of Pomona, we believe it is imperative that public agencies and officials uphold a sense of responsibility towards transparency and integrity. The City of Pomona is a major stakeholder within Three Valleys’ District, and includes a diverse population of community members who are concerned about the Board’s ethical decision making in the study process. Again, we urge the Board to vote and remove the district from involvement in the biased and flawed Cadiz study.
Thank you for your consideration and we look forward to working with you on projects to uplift the City of Pomona and surrounding Three Valleys Stakeholders.
Sincerely,
Guillermo Gonzalez
Board President