Environmental and tribal groups sued the Trump administration on Tuesday to block its recent approval of a permit for a controversial project to pump groundwater out of the Mojave Desert.
What happened: The Chemehuevi Indian Tribe, Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, Native American Land Conservancy and National Parks Conservation Association filed one lawsuit, and the Center for Biological Diversity, the Sierra Club and Earthjustice filed another, both in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.
The groups are arguing that the Bureau of Land Management failed to fully analyze the project’s environmental and cultural impacts when it approved a right of way this month for the Fenner Gap Mutual Water Co. to convert a natural gas pipeline cutting across federal lands into a water pipeline.
Why this matters: The project is a part of decadeslong efforts by the firm Cadiz Inc. to pump and export water in the area, which environmentalists, some local tribes and top California politicians have opposed because of the possible harm to the sensitive ecosystem. One former state lawmaker compared the long-running dispute to “Hatfield and McCoy.”
