Cantil Sewage Dump?

I found a file belonging to my mother Marion Deaver about a story that I had never seen or heard of before. My brother Bill Deaver remembered it, and why it did not happen.

It seems that two members of the now defunct Mojave Industrial Action Committee were trying to attract American Potash and Chemical to build a new plant near Mojave. Because the potash plant would have a disposal problem, the two men, Bob Byers and Richard Poole, decided that a long downhill pipeline could be run from Mojave to Keohn Lake in the Cantil area so that the industrial waste from the potash plant could be dumped there.

Some ideas sound good if you say them fast and this was one of those. Perhaps the Mojave men thought that no one in Cantil would notice or even care if toxic waste was dumped on its dry lake.

Au contraire… the residents of Cantil not only noticed the planning but threw what my mother-in-law used to call a “hissy duck fit”!

This was in 1964 and quite a few people lived in the Cantil area, which is north of California City. Over 100 of them gathered one evening at the then Red Rock Elementary School to hear about the new industrial sewer and to listen to the proposal as presented by the Mojave Utility District and state officials.

A loan from the state in the amount of $723,750 had already been approved for the water district to use to construct the pipeline that would cost in excess of $1 million.

The residents of Cantil formed an organization called the Cantil Property Owners Association solely to protest the pipeline. What was one of their first questions at the meeting? Whom do we sue?

State and federal officials who were at the meeting investigating the feasibility of the project claimed that test core drilling showed that there was a deep, thick, “impervious” clay layer under the lake. One official explained that water from the drilling showed only salt water under the lake, which was not fit for domestic purposes.

Cantil residents fired questions at the officials and tempers flared. John Christie, president of the property owners group told those present “Are we going to be the sewage dump for the state of California? I will fight this no matter how high I have to go!”

He added that the Cantil area was not a desert wasteland, but a fertile valley. He also asked to what extent the officials had toured the lake. He explained that the lake was full of sinkholes and crevasses and that when it rained the water on the lake was gone the next day.

Christie asked why the water ran down in the lake if it had a solid clay base. He added that he thought the toxic waste would deteriorate the clay and seep through anyway.

Christie also charged that the Mojave group had kept the proposal a secret so that the Cantil residents would not know about it until too late.

At a later meeting of the property owners, they decided to contact Governor Brown (the first one) to protest the proposal.

F. A Fox, of the Long Beach Salt Company, which then mined industrial salt from the dry lake, was concerned that acids from the waste would contaminate the wells owned by the salt company.

Much ado was given for the entire idea, as everyone in Cantil tried to halt the project. However, in the end fowl won out over all other complainants.

Turns out Keohn Lake was –and is- part of the Pacific Flyway. When there is water in the lake various fowl land there to rest and perhaps feed on brine shrimp.

No way could the lake be used for toxic sewage piped in from Mojave. American Potash and Chemical pulled out on the offer to build in Mojave and went to Mississippi; and that is why we have the environmental process.

It was all “much ado about nothing,” like Shakespeare’s play of the same name.