California
Anza Water Project
Current Project Lead
Logan McDevitt,
About the Project
The Anza Water Project is working to serve non-tribal members in the Anza community in conjunction with a historical and ongoing water rights settlement taking place between the Cahuilla Tribe and the Federal Government. In the 1950s, the Cahuilla Tribe (and other local tribes) began facilitating land development on their lands. Litigation began as it was determined that the local tribes had not been granted the local water rights agreed upon in their historical negotiations and contracts. The current phase of negotiations has been ongoing for the past 13 years. An engineering consultant, Natural Resources Consulting Engineers, Inc. (NRCE), developed preliminary engineering and cost estimates of supplying the Cahuilla tribe with a new pipeline and reservoir. This settlement, however, makes no guarantees for the local non-tribal members in the Anza community, who have faced difficulty in developing new water infrastructure in recent decades. In response, local concerned citizens has organized to form the Anza-Aguanga Citizens Water Rights (AACWR) group, which acts as an informal community base organization. Their goal is to represent landowner interest in requesting congress to fund the extension of the Cahuilla Tribal pipeline down the center of Anza to provide water domestic use and fire protection. The Community Engineering Corps (CEC) was contacted in August of 2019 to support the AACWR funding request to Congress.
Our Plan
UCLA EWB is planning on aiding the Anza Water Project as we are currently on hold with international projects. We believe that this will be a great opportunity to gain professional experience while working on a project beneficial to local communities. There are numerous task teams within the project, such as pipeline, storage tank, CAD, site layout, cost estimate, hydraulic modeling, fire protection, and water treatment. You do not by any means need to be an expert in any of these, but the project is looking forward to helping students learn and gain valuable experience! If you are interested in working on any of these teams and building up your resume while helping a great cause, or if you have any additional questions, please reach out to Logan McDevitt via email (loganmcdevitt00@gmail.com) or text at (916)-276-1338.