(May 7) Glenborough, LLC, which has for the last five years been leasing 16,642 square feet of office space in San Bernardino to the county of San Bernardino for use by its workforce development department, will take in almost $2 million more for the extension of that lease for another five years.
On May 6 the board of supervisors approved exercising a five-year option to extend the term from July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2019 for 16,642 square feet of office space at 658 E. Brier Street, Suite 100, in San Bernardino for a total of $1,997,040.
In approving the lease extension the board authorized the county’s real estate services department to negotiate keeping the Workforce Development Department in its current quarters as an alternative procedure to seeking bids from other owners of office space.
In a report to the board of supervisors, Terry Thompson, the director of the county’s real estate services department and Sandy Harmsen, the director of the county’s workforce development department, wrote “This item will amend an existing lease for the workforce development department  by extending the term five years from July 1, 2014 through June 30, 2019 for office space in San Bernardino because of the continuing need to provide employment services to job seekers and employers in the San Bernardino area. The workforce development department  administers and operates programs under the Department of Labor’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA). These programs are often provided by other parties and institutions that partner with the workforce development department  and co-locate in the workforce development department  facilities.
The employment development department is co-located at the workforce development department’s facility at 658 E. Brier Street, Suite 100, in San Bernardino, and provides similar, but not identical services to job seekers and employers. The combined services offered to those seeking employment include career counseling, job search, assessment and occupational training services provided through employee resource centers. Business customers benefit from customized recruitment services and a large pool of pre-screened job applicants provided through business resource centers.”
For the 16,642 square feet, the county will pay $375,444 to lease the property from July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2015;  $387,420 from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016;  $399,408 from July 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017;  $411,396 from July 1, 2017 to June 30, 2018; $423,372 from July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019.

(May 16)  Colton‘s city clerk and records manager, Eileen C. Gomez, will depart Colton on May 22 to accept the position of city clerk with the city of Laguna Niguel.
Gomez was first elected to the Colton city clerk position in 2008 and reelected in 2012. She was given the added duties of records manager in 2010. She was not scheduled to stand for reelection until 2016.  The Colton City Council will appoint an interim city clerk and seek to fill the position with a special election to correspond to the November election when the mayor and  council members from districts 1, 2 and 4 are up for voter selection.
Gomez was chosen for the Laguna Niguel post on the strength of her experience, which included her work in Colton as well as with the city of San Bernardino, where she previously worked in the public works, engineering and code enforcement departments.

(May 12) The cities of Upland and Montclair are ending their decades-long arrangement with the city of Ontario for the provision of fire and emergency medical dispatch service in favor of a new contract with the Consolidated Fire Agencies of San Bernardino County, known as CONFIRE.
CONFIRE is a joint powers authority composed of San Bernardino County, Rialto, Redlands, Colton, Loma Linda and Rancho Cucamonga. The cities and communities of Running Sprigs, Twentynine Palms, Apple Valley, Big Bear and Baker contract with CONFIRE for the provision of  fire and medical emergency dispatch.
Beginning in the 1970s, Ontario had the premier emergency dispatch system on the west side of San Bernardino County, which utilized computers to assist dispatchers in efficiently dispatching the most immediately available firetrucks and ambulances to scenes of emergency.
CONFIRE has acquired an even more advanced computer assisted dispatch system, and gradually cities on the west end of the county are switching to CONFIRE’s system.
Whereas many dispatch systems typically divide cities into quadrants and dispatch emergency vehicles and responders to emergencies based largely on those pre-set divisions, Brian Acosta, the interim communications director for CONFIRE, this week told the Upland City Council that his agency’s dispatch division “sends the closest avabile units to the incident.”
At present, most fire department calls are for medical assistance. “Emergency medical dispatch makes up 80 percent of our calls,” Accosta said.
Upland and Montclair merged their respective fire departments’ managment and administration divisions earlier this year.
Both department’s have given Ontario a 180-day notice of their intent to terminate their contracts with that city for emergency fire department dispatch.

By clicking on the portal below, you can access a PDF of the May 9 Edition of the San Bernardino County Sentinel.

Sentinel 05-09-14

(May 8)  Six inmates at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga were subjected to such horrific treatment at the hands of San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputies that they should collectively recover a total of $180-million, according to a federal  lawsuit filed on their behalf.
Named as defendants in the suit are San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon, West Valley Detention Center commander captain Jeff Rose, six deputies identified by the last names of Teychea, Oakley, Copas, Escomilla, Morris, Snell, and Strifler, as well as two civilian jailers with the last names of Stockman and Neil, along with the county of San Bernardino and up to ten yet to be identified members of the department. The Sentinel has learned that the seven  deputies referenced in the suit, in some cases with variant spellings of their names, are Brock Teyechea, Nicholas Oakley, Russell Kopasz, Robert Escamilla,  Robert Morris, Eric Smale, and Daniel Stryffeler. An eighth deputy,  Andrew Cruz, was identified as one of the unnamed defendants. Brandon Stockman was identified as one of the unsworn civilian jailers.
The plaintiffs in the case are John Hanson, Lamar Graves, Brandon Schilling, Christopher J. Sly, Eddie Caldero and Michael Mesa, all of whom were housed at West Valley between January 1, 2013 and the end of March 2014. They are represented by attorney Stan Hodge, Jim Terrell and Sharon Bruner. Hodge, a former Superior Court judge, was a prosecutor with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office before he was elevated to the bench.
“During the plaintiffs’ incarceration,” the lawsuit states, “the plaintiffs were subjected by defendants to beatings, torture including but not limited to extending the handcuffed arms behind the plaintiffs causing extraordinary pain to plaintiff’s body, electric shock, including electric shock to their genitalia, sleep deprivation, had shotguns placed to their heads and sodomy. All these actions were taken without any legitimate purpose. The defendants thereby deprived the plaintiffs the right to be free from punishment without due process of law pursuant to the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution.”
The suit alleges that “As a direct and proximate result of the conduct of the defendants the plaintiffs have suffered extreme physical and emotional injury. The conduct of the defendants was willful, malicious and designed to inflict pain.”
The suit further alleges that the treatment the inmates underwent “were applications of unreasonable and unlawful force and deprived the plaintiffs of their right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures protected by the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments of the  Constitution of the United States.”
The treatment was institutionalized, the lawsuit states, in that both the sheriff and those supervising the jail had knowledge of the activity.
“The defendant John McMahon and the defendant Jeff rose and their subordinate administrators sued herein had knowledge that the abusive conduct by which the plaintiffs were deprived of their civil rights were taking place and were going to take place in the future and failed to take any action to cause the violation of plaintiffs’ rights to be prevented.”
The suit maintains the defendants conduct “was under the color of state law. Each of the individual defendants are being sued in their individual capacity as well as their official capacity.”
Language in the suit suggests that the mistreatment of the prisoners was documented by medical treatment subsequently provided to them.  “Those plaintiffs who were permitted by the defendants to obtain medical treatment had to receive such treatment due to the conduct of the defendants,” the lawsuit states.
The suit seeks $15 million in compensatory damages for physical, mental and emotional injury to each plaintiff and $15 million for exemplary and punitive damages for each defendant, in addition to attorney fees.
A spokeswoman for the department declined comment on the suit, which was filed on May 7, roughly two months after reports of abuse at the facility resulted in the FBI launching an investigation into the matter.  In early April, reliable sources told the Sentinel that during the early stages of that inquiry, three deputies were “walked off” the grounds of the facility by federal agents. Those three deputies, who have now been identified as Teyechea, Oakley and Cruz, were terminated on the strength of the FBI’s initial findings. Another deputy reportedly voluntarily resigned, according to one of the sources, who is knowledgeable about department operations. That source also reported that sheriff’s department personnel acting as guards at the recently opened Adelanto Detention Facility had used mace against inmates while they were in their cells.

(May 7)  The city of Twentynine Palms’ intrepid foray to the forefront of California cities challenging the redevelopment agency-shuttering legislation passed by the state of California in 2011 has paid off, with a court ruling last month that overturned the California Department of Finance’s denial of the city’s claim that it could use $11,575,000 in redevelopment bond proceeds for an urban renewal project downtown.
Twentynine Palms, a city of  the 25,048 in San Bernardino County’s Mojave Desert Outback, in 2011 through its redevelopment agency gave final go-ahead to Project Phoenix, which is to include a community center, a 250-seat theater, classrooms, a civic plaza, a park, a paseo, residential units, a wastewater treatment plant, and improvements to the downtown fire station.
That action came just three months before the legislature passed AB X1 26 and AB X1 27, which shuttered more than 400 municipal and county redevelopment agencies up and down the state.
Despite warnings from the state that the city needed to dispense with its redevelopment efforts, the city nevertheless proceeded with the Project Phoenix initiative.
Twentynine Palms officials maintained that AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 are trumped by federal securities regulations, meaning the money the Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency bonded for in 2011 must be utilized only for the purpose that bondholders were told the money would be applied toward.
Twentynine Palms City Attorney A. Patrick Muñoz, of the law firm Rutan & Tucker, asserted in filings with the Sacramento Superior Court that the non-taxable bonds issued in 2011 created specific obligations between the city, as the issuer, and the bond purchasers, and as such are enforceable obligations. If the city allows the state  to use the money for a purpose other than what the city had specified in marketing the bonds to the bond buyers, that would constitute fraud, according to Munoz.
The city filed its paperwork in Sacramento Superior Court because AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 contained language requiring any legal challenges to the law take place there.
The city in 2012  followed Muñoz’s recommendation to have  the city’s successor agency lay claim to the redevelopment money and declare its intent to proceed with Project Phoenix.  AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 provided for the creation of locally based oversight boards to see to the discharging of remaining redevelopment money.  In  May 2012, Muñoz drafted a contract between the successor agency and the city by which the  successor agency is to  turn over the bond spending authority to the city with a directive that it go toward Project Phoenix. On a 4-1 vote on May 22, 2012,  the city council voted unanimously to transfer  the seven-member oversight board’s duties and obligations to administer the bond proceeds to “the city in its capacity as a municipal corporation.”
AB X1 26 and AB X1 27  passed in July of 2011 but were challenged by a confederation of cities.  Since the city of Twentynine Palms Redevelopment Agency originally issued the bonds on April 19, 2011, the use of the bond funds was put in abeyance as the city sought relief from the courts. The challenge to AB X1 26 and AB X1 27 was turned down by the California Supreme Court in January  2012 and the dissolution of redevelopment agencies statewide ensued on February 1, 2012.  The use of those bonds was prohibited by the California Department of Finance following the dissolution.
The city of Twentynine Palms, however, persisted in its separate challenge with regard to the Phoenix funds, however.  The key issue in the case was the question of whether an agreement between the city and the successor agency known as the bond proceeds agreement is valid in light of the laws which dissolved redevelopment agencies. The California Department of Finance asserted the agreement was not valid and as a result the city could not spend the bond proceeds on Project Phoenix. The department further asserted that the city acted in bad faith and hence the bond proceeds agreement should be invalidated.
Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael P. Kenny disagreed, and instead held that the city acted appropriately, in good faith, and in compliance with the laws that existed at the time the bond proceeds agreement was adopted.
Kenny’s ruling states: “The court concludes that the bond proceeds agreement is a valid and enforceable agreement that constitutes an “enforceable obligation” within the meaning of the redevelopment dissolution laws. DOF’s determination to the contrary is not supported by the facts or the law and cannot be upheld.”
As a result, Kenny  ruled in favor of the city and its successor agency, summarizing its ruling as follows:
“For the reasons stated above, the court finds in favor of petitioners [The city and its successor agency] and grants their request for declaratory, injunctive and writ of mandate relief to invalidate DOF’s (Department of Finance’s) determinations regarding the bond proceeds agreement and the bond proceeds. The court finds that the bond proceeds agreement is an “enforceable obligation” within the meaning of the redevelopment dissolution laws, and that nothing in the redevelopment laws precludes petitioners from using the bond proceeds for Project Phoenix and related public improvements as provided in the bond proceeds agreement.”
Kenny continued, “A writ of mandate shall therefore issue directing DOF to vacate its determinations regarding the bond proceeds agreement and the successor agency’s transfer of bond proceeds to the city, along with an injunction directing DOF not to enforce those determinations, and a judgment declaring that the bond proceeds agreement is a valid and enforceable contract and an enforceable obligation under the redevelopment dissolution laws, and that the transfer of the bond proceeds from the successor agency to the city for the purposes of implementing the Bond Proceeds Agreement was a legally valid act that does not violate the redevelopment dissolution laws.”

(May 8)  SAN BERNARDINO—As was widely anticipated, the San Bernardino citizens municipal charter review committee this week recommended that in November a ballot initiative be placed before city voters calling for dispensing with the city’s charter Section 186.
Section 186 effectively locks in salaries for the city’s public safety employees that are at par with or greater than those salaries received by their counterparts in ten similarly sized California cites.
San Bernardino is a charter city as opposed to a general law city. Its charter and amendments thereto, per state law, are approved by the city’s voters. Provisions put into the charter by means of a citywide vote over a decade ago require that the city’s public safety employees – firefighters and police officers – be paid on a scale equal to the average pay of police officers and firefighters in ten similarly-sized California cities.
San Bernardino has been beset with financial difficulties that culminated in the city’s filing for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2012. Former mayor Patrick Morris has maintained that a major factor in the city’s fiscal deterioration is excessive salaries and benefits provided to city employees and retirees. Carey Davis, an accountant by profession and a political ally to Morris, succeeded Morris in March after defeating Wendy McCammack, a former councilwoman who had long championed generous pay increases for municipal safety employees.
As one of his first acts in office, Davis called for the creation of a municipal commission to consider charter changes, suggesting that the requirement that police and fire officers be provided with raises based on salaries given to their counterparts in cities free of the financial challenges San Bernardino faces should be done away with. That move failed when it was pointed out that a municipal commission cannot be formed without prior voter approval. The proposal was adjusted to allow the creation of a citizens committee to review the city charter.
In the current fiscal year, police department and fire department operations represent 68 percent of the spending out of the city’s general fund. Salaries make up the lion’s share of those departments’ operating budgets.
Over the last several years, San Bernardino has been particularly hard hit by the economic downturn that has gripped the nation, state and region. Despite the city’s 2012 filing for bankruptcy protection, it has continued to give firefighters and police officers raises in keeping with the provisions of Section 186 of the city charter. Yearly, city officials and police and fire union heads start with a list of California cities with populations between 150,000 and 250,000. In turns, each removes a city from that list until ten remain. Salaries are then computated upon the average pay to that particular group – firefighters or fire department management or policeman or police management – in the remaining ten cities.
During Morris’s rein as mayor, a schism had developed on the council over the continuation of what some characterized as too generous salaries and benefits to city public safety employees. Morris and several of his allies pushed for concessions from the police and fire unions on salaries and benefits. One Morris ally in particular, former 3rd Ward councilman Tobin Brinker, was outspoken about the need to reduce city payroll costs and he championed a city employee pension reduction measure that earned him the enmity of both the police and fire union.  He was targeted by those unions in the 2011 election and was defeated by John Valdivia, who upon election joined with the council coalition then led by councilwoman McCammack, which sought to sustain police and fire department pay at the established levels.
With the city’s bankruptcy filing, there was outrage in some quarters of the city over the continuation in the escalation of public safety employee pay. Morris became an outspoken advocate of pay and pension reform and supported Davis against McCammack in last year’s mayoral race, which resulted in a runoff between the two in which Davis prevailed earlier this year.
On March 17, the city council passed a resolution that was opposed by Valdivia which called for the creation of the citizens charter review committee. The resolution delineated that each of the council’s seven members would choose one registered voter from their respective wards to serve on the committee and that Davis would get two appointments to the panel, including one culled from the city’s business community.
Ward 1 Councilwoman Virginia Marquez selected Casey Daily for the committee; Ward 2 Councilman Benito Barrios  chose Dennis Baxter; Ward 3 Councilman John Valdivia appointed Gary Walbourne;  Ward 4 Councilman Fred Shorett selected Hillel Cohn; Ward 5 Councilman Henry Nickel chose Michael Craft; Ward 6 Councilman Rikke Van Johnson brought in Hardy Brown; and Ward 7 Councilman James Mulvill tapped Philip Savage.  Davis selected Thomas Pierce and Dan Carlone.
This week, the panel voted 7-2, with Walbourne and Craft dissenting, to make a non-binding recommendation to the city council that it use its authority to place a measure on the November ballot asking voters to repeal Section 186 and instead adjust salaries through the collective bargaining process.
Committee member Hardy Brown importuned his committee colleagues to do something about the public safety salary problem which he said has grown “to eat up 68 percent to 72 percent of the budget. This has reduced our ability to fairly allocate resources to other services that we expect our city government to provide. It has forced us to cut down on other employee services and compensation. It has not made us safer nor improved [staff] morale.”
Walbourne, who indicated he found persuasive police union president Steve Turner’s warning that police officers would leave for better paying opportunities elsewhere if Section 186 were rescinded, wanted the committee to delay its consideration of any recommendations, but was outvoted by his colleagues, who were racing to meet a county registrar of voters deadline for the city’s request that the measure be placed on the November ballot.

(May 7)  Bob Conaway said he is running for Congress because “They need someone with my background more than ever. I have handled mediations and have done a lot of crisis management. I can talk to people and with people who are conservative and find common ground. There is too much posturing and too many lemmings in both parties. As an attorney I have been professionally engaged and I have done pro bono [i.e., charity] work in mediation. I can resolve things other people can’t.”
A Democrat, Conaway eschewed a liberal label but acknowledges he is a progressive on social issues. He embraces fiscal conservatism, but rejects what he characterized as the reflexive need of the GOP toward insulating “biases built in for economic self interest. I know I can bring to the table common sense and still have people on the conservative side feel comfortable with me talking to them. I give them respect. There is far too much sniping going on.”
Conaway said, “Water planning is a major issue facing the district. For so long, water planning has been less than intellectually honest. We are now dealing with a real head butt in terms of water management.”
Conaway continued, “We are an underemployed area. We have to have the necessary infrastructure so that we can grow and produce jobs. We have to identify what our infrastructure resources are, what our needs are and build it accordingly to support the economy. There is a lot we can build on. We already have warehousing capacity built. We can put in rail spur lines. We could use the macro- and microwarehouses and turn those into a strategy for all of Southern California. One of the things is to get funds so we are able to operate Southern California Logistics Airport, the old George Air Force Base full time, with full time air traffic controllers in the towers, security for the facility, a full time customs desk so we can move cargo in or out of there. There is not a commitment to that. Congress could bust through those restrictions. Los Angeles has a virtual monopoly, with their foot on our throat. We need to get federal resources. It is strategically critical to get the resources for both military and cargo flights. Cook has not been on that because Jim Brulte is his patron. Brulte is owned by the Los Angeles Airport Authority. They are one of his biggest clients. They have exerted control over Ontario. If I am wrong, then Paul Cook should get off his ass and get the resources to get the air cargo necessities at Southern California Logistics Airport, the towers and security measures and everything else we must have to streamline the function and management out there so we can get our reasonably fair share of the cargo activity. This can be done through federal assistance. The federal government targets things that will grow because the government wants an enhanced revenue stream and that is something that is doable in a two year term.”
Taxes need not be increased, Conaway said, but those who are dodging taxes need to be brought to heel.
“We need a more stable fiscal system,” Conaway said. “We have to examine revenue leakage.  There are people generating revenue who are not paying their fair share of taxes. These are not a lot of people percentage-wise, but this represents a whole lot of money on a statewide basis. You can look at the state controller’s report and the Board of Equalization’s report. The federal government has to be able to enforce tax laws beyond the state of California. The solutions are straightforward. An enforcement arm that is not political is what is needed. We need to have the resources in place, investigative teams and prosecution teams looking at revenue leakage and those who are not paying taxes.”
The district needs to maximize the performance of its existing assets, Conaway said.
“As far as improving the operation at old George Air Force Base goes, we could very fast build up our revenue through grants and bridge loans, with the incentive being that when the airport starts making money, those loans will be paid off,” he said. “We could bring in full time air traffic controllers to the towers, customs officers, and security. Once you do that you will have revenue generated. There is warehousing in place already and the warehousing fees could generate an economic stream. For every dollar in grants or loans, seven to eight dollars are returned, based upon studies that have been done. We have to have a harbor, which means the ability to bring in cargo and move it out, 24/7. That is how you accomplish it.”
Conaway said he represents the superior choice for 8th District Congressman “because I can  build a consensus and find the grounds for consensus. I don’t just follow. Ultimately it is the private sector that government must work with to accomplish the objective of economic growth. We do not have much in discretionary income so we have to increase the tax base, meaning we have to increase the number of generators and not increase taxes on those already paying them.
“I have put together packages for clients that brought development possibilities together. There are people out there with successful businesses because of the operational, or developmental or partnership or cooperative packages I negotiated for them, often with the government involved.”
The 8th Congressional District leans Republican. Conaway and another Democrat, Odessia Lee, and a Republican, Paul Hanosh, are challenging the incumbent, Congressman Paul Cook.
“Cook is basically a lemming,” Conaway said. “He follows whatever clip they tell him to.”
Conaway said that Lee “seems like a nice enough person, but I have heard nothing from her I consider insightful or really relevant to the issues in the 8th District. All I know about the other guy is he has apparently mortgaged his house to put his candidate’s statement on the ballot. If you want a lemming, vote for Cook. If you want people with no experience, vote for one of the other two. If you want someone who can listen to both sides and negotiate and come to a consensus, then I am your candidate. If you want posturing, you can vote for someone else. Where government will end up is with a large number of people with different backgrounds and different goals and priorities who want to talk the same language. Some of the better negotiators are no longer there, such as [former Congressman] George Brown and [former Congressman] Jerry Lewis. These were people who had the ability to get people to talk and keep the dialogue going. Where are we going to go? We have more and more voters who are no longer Democrats or Republicans and they are registered as declined to state. We are getting forty or fifty percent so disenfranchised from either party and they don’t bother to vote. What you have left is posturing. Posturing by threatening to take away Social Security in not going to do it. We have to find a way to grow the economy not on increased tax rates but on creating more taxable profits and income. People need a politician capable of doing all that. I am that person.”
A graduate of Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, Conaway served in the Marines and graduated from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in speech communications and business. He got his juris doctors degree from Western University School of Law and has been a practicing lawyer since 1985, practicing in the areas of administrative law, criminal defense, civil rights litigation, and employment litigation. He was formerly a commercial union insurance litigation manager.
Married he has three children and three grandchildren.

(May 6)  The board of supervisors this week transferred further spending authority with regard to the county’s  $95.6 million upgrading of its public safety radio system from information services director Jennifer Hilber to county chief executive officer Greg Devereaux.
Last December 17, the board approved contract amendments with Motorola Solutions, Inc. (formerly Motorola, Inc.) and Aviat U.S., Inc. in an amount not to exceed $77,864,106 for equipment and $17,780,680 for implementation for a total of $95,644,786 to upgrade the County’s Public Safety Radio System to the digital Project 25 standard and to extend the agreement from the current term of January 27, 2009 through January 26, 2016, to the new term of January 27, 2009 to December 31, 2020.
At that time, the board designated authority to Hilber, as the chief information officer, to approve and sign change orders to the Motorola/Aviat U.S., Inc. agreements as they pertain to minor changes of the scope of work and timing of the project as needed, subject to review and approval by County Counsel.
This week, at Hilber’s recommendation, the board  designated chief county executive officer Greg Devereaux as the authorized representative to approve and sign change orders as they pertain to the reallocation of project funding, subject to review by county counsel.
The total contract amount remains unchanged.
Hilber did not explain why she wanted the authority transferred to Devereaux other than to state that it will “ensure project efficiency” and “will streamline the complex radio upgrade project, which is expected to undergo various changes to the scope of work throughout the contract term, including the reallocation of project funding, and timing of the project. Such designation of authority will avoid delays to critical project timelines and ensure funds are reallocated efficiently and timely to maintain the project’s budget.”

(May 6)  Six lawsuits that challenged the Cadiz Water Project were dismissed in a single order by Orange County Superior Court Judge Gail Andler on May 1.
Los Angeles-based Cadiz, Inc. is undertaking what is officially known as the Cadiz Valley Water Conservation, Recovery and Storage Project, a plan to siphon billions of gallons of water from the East Mojave Desert for use elsewhere.  Since the 1980s, Cadiz, Inc. has operated a 500-acre organic grape, citrus, melon and pepper farm in the Cadiz Valley, thereby obtaining water pumping rights. In 2012 Cadiz, Inc. arranged to have the Santa Margarita Water District, to which it is contracted to deliver a portion of the water to be extracted from the desert, assume lead agency status for the project’s approval.
The project itself and the means by which it was approved generated nine separate lawsuits. Two of those were earlier dismissed. One lodged in federal court was withdrawn. Until May 1, six others – brought by Delaware Tetra Technologies, the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association,  the San Gorgonio Sierra Club, San Bernardino Valley Audubon Society and an Orange County water customers coalition, Citizens and Ratepayers Opposing Water Nonsense, remained active.
San Bernardino County contemplated, but in March 2012 ultimately elected against, challenging Orange County-based Santa Margarita’s assumption of lead agency status on the project. Instead on May 1, 2012 the county entered into a memorandum of understanding with that district and Cadiz, Inc. and its corporate entities, including the Fenner Valley Mutual Water Company, allowing Santa Margarita to oversee the environmental impact report for the project and conduct the public hearings related to project approval.
On July 31, 2012, the Santa Margarita Water District Board of Directors approved the Cadiz Water Project and certified the environmental impact report for the Cadiz Water project.
On October 1, 2012, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors gave approval to a groundwater monitoring plan to facilitate completion of the project.
Cadiz intends to export the lion’s share of the water to Orange and Los Angeles counties but is also looking to sell water to other entities in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
In several of the lawsuits, the adequacy of the environmental certification of the project was under attack, based upon assertions that the report’s description of the project was incomplete and misleading and that it did not offer a meaningful size-up of the effect upon the water supply, air quality, and biological resources.  San Bernardino County’s abdication of its land use and environmental oversight authority is also a recurrent issue in the lawsuits, with the claim that the  Santa Margarita Water District in Rancho Santa Margarita located over 200 miles from the project, was not the proper lead agency for the project.
Andler consolidated the cases and heard them together. In her ruling, indicated that having the Santa Margarita Water District serve as the lead agency was disconcerting, but not enough in and of itself to decertify the project approval. She dismissed the suits in one fell swoop.
“Cadiz is grateful for the thorough and deliberate review by the trial court and the Court’s validation of the environmental review conducted for the Water Project,” said Cadiz CEO Scott Slater.
Project opponents said they are contemplating appealing Andler’s ruling.