The State of Water in the Coachella Valley

During the La Quinta Planning Commission meeting on March 22, 2022, questions were raised about the water use of the proposed Coral Mountain Resort, which by their own estimates will consume more than three hundred million gallons (312,370,000) of water each year. The response by city staff, regarding water use planning by local water districts, was as follows:

“They have, through the years, been very wise and very aggressive about their recharge efforts. They have recharge ponds all over the valley, for the upper basin and the lower basin, and have very aggressively recharged the basin in years when they could, to the point where they reversed the overdraft condition that occurred in the mid 2010s.” 

- La Quinta City Staff

This statement is directly contradicted by publicly available documents published by the Coachella Valley Water District. According to the report, “The State of the Coachella Valley Aquifer”, jointly prepared by the Coachella Valley Water District and the Desert Water Authority: “Currently, groundwater levels are declining.”

Source: https://www.cvwd.org/DocumentCenter/View/77/CVWD-DWA-The-State-of-the-Coachella-Valley-Aquifer-PDF

The most recent annual report prepared under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act for the Indio Subbasin of the Coachella Valley aquifer also contradicts La Quinta city staff. Their figures show an overdraft of the aquifer in water year 2019-2020 of 29,803 acre feet, or almost ten billion gallons (9,711,000,000).

Source: https://sgma.water.ca.gov/portal/alternative/annualreport/9

The Coachella Valley Water district is upfront about the reason for this overdraft, stating on their website that “regulatory restrictions and drought have limited the districts’ access to its imported water entitlements in recent years.”

Source: http://www.cvwd.org/162/Groundwater-Replenishment-Imported-Water

Therefore, as long as drought persists, there will not be enough water for the Coral Mountain Resort, let alone many other essential uses - farming, drinking water, and sanitation - throughout the Coachella Valley. Instead of accepting real world conditions, project proponents are hoping conditions will change in the future. From the Planning Commission meeting on March 22:

“Those analyses are prepared based on both a very long history, and a very complex future modeling effort,”

- La Quinta City Staff

We find the reliance on modeling for water availability projections to be insufficient, a view shared by Dr. Andrew Schwartz, lead scientist and station manager at the UC Berkeley Central Sierra Snow Lab.  In an essay published by The New York Times on April 4, 2022, he wrote “[...] these models suffer from the same simplistic view of drought and water, and they are in dire need of an update.”

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/opinion/environment/california-drought-wildfires.html

Until more accurate water models can be developed and tested, the only responsible course of action is to trust our own eyes. Take a tour of water in the Coachella Valley today and you will find cause for serious and immediate concern. The Whitewater River Groundwater Replenishment Facility, at over 900 acres, has been empty since at least August 2021, and the Mission Creek Replenishment Facility has been empty since 2012. The Whitewater River Channel, which in past years has brought snow melt from the peaks of Mount San Gorgonio to the valley, is dry at the surface, and the Salton Sea is rapidly becoming a public health crisis as the sea level drops.

In conclusion, we urge the Planning Commission to deny the Coral Mountain Resort proposal. The world we’re living in now is different from the one past generations grew up in, and the pace of change is only increasing. When making decisions about if, where, and how to build a house, a golf course, or a surf park in the desert, the option to ignore reality is quickly disappearing. Instead, we hope all members of our community are able to proactively embrace climate resilient planning, and work together to find innovative and equitable solutions to the unprecedented environmental challenges ahead of us.