Greetings, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cadiz January 2025 corporate update investor call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. I will now turn the conference over to Courtney Degener, Vice President, Investor Relations of Cadiz. Thank you. You may begin.
Thank you, welcome to everyone to Cadiz's January 2025 corporate update investor call. We will focus on reviewing the company's 2024 milestone achievements and outline our objectives for 2025. The call will be led by our Chairman of the Board and CEO, Susan Kennedy, she'll be joined by our CFO, Stan Speer. During the conference call today, the company will be making forward-looking statements regarding expectations for future performance and business prospects. Forward-looking information involves risks and uncertainties, the stated expectations could differ materially from actual results or performance. The company advises you to read and consider the company's SEC filings, including our third quarter 2024 Form 10-Q and 2023 annual report on Form 10-K, for a detailed discussion of risk factors inherent to the business and the company.
The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances that occur after the call. Now, I am pleased to introduce our Chairman and CEO, Susan Kennedy. Susan, over to you.
Thank you. Welcome, everybody. Thanks for being here today. Some investors have known Cadiz for many years are up to speed on the changes in the company, our projects and our services, most importantly, the impact that climate change has had on the water industry what it means for Cadiz our position in this dramatically changing market. Some of you are also new to the Cadiz story, I'm going to start with a very brief recap. Cadiz owns major land, water, pipeline, and treatment technology assets in Southern California, in the high desert in San Bernardino County. We're near the borders of California, Nevada, and Arizona, at the center of the water infrastructure network that serves the Southwestern U.S. We sit at the base of a 2,000 square mile watershed. That 2,000 square miles is half the size of Los Angeles County.
These assets were acquired and developed over several decades. 45,000 acres of land, fully entitled land, millions of acres of new water supply, 500+ miles of pipeline assets, including 220 miles of existing pipeline that's already in the ground today, 180 miles of steel pipe, 40+ miles of rights of way secured for new construction. We also have a water filtration technology that I believe is the most cost-effective technology on the market. This unique combination of assets gives us a suite of products and services that allows us to address water supply issues across a broad market in the Southwest. Cadiz has been around for a long time. Three things are different about Cadiz today from the company that many of you knew about 20 years ago.
We now have 20 years of data that proves there's more water in storage at Cadiz today than there is in our nation's largest reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell combined. 20 years ago, no one seemed to need water supply. Today, we're the most valuable new water resource in the Southwest. Cadiz is not a single water project today. Our unique combination of assets, new water supply, storage, conveyance, and treatment technology, allows us to integrate products and services into other projects being developed by water agencies across the Southwest. We're maximizing our land and water resources today, unlocking additional value from these assets for investors. In addition to agricultural operations, water supply, and storage projects, we're creating partnerships to develop hydrogen and solar at Cadiz Ranch.
We're generating revenues from land leases and creating synergies that could lower our operating costs for our water projects and potentially provide clean energy to other projects in the region. As we develop these project companies and partnerships, you'll see Cadiz move to a structure in which we'll receive revenue from four different segments. Cadiz Ranch, which would be revenues from land leases, energy partnerships, the agriculture at Cadiz Ranch. ATEC Water Systems, revenues from water treatment products and services. Fenner Gap Mutual Water Company, 100% of the revenues from the sale of water supply and 49% of revenues from the sale of water storage to water agencies across the Southwest. Revenues from NewCo, the newly formed LLC that we're creating for financing construction and operation of the Mojave Groundwater Bank.
The NewCo LLC will receive 51% of the cash flows from the sale of storage and fees paid by water agencies for use of the pipelines. As managing member of the LLC, Cadiz will also receive revenues and profit sharing from the storage and banking operations through the LLC. 2024 was a pivotal year for Cadiz. When we started the year, we had three goals. Sign enough water supply agreements with water agencies to support construction of the Northern Pipeline. Establish the financing vehicles and the project companies for construction of the groundwater bank on a very aggressive schedule that would allow us to begin delivering water in 2026 and bring the banking project online as early as 2027. Third, to expand our footprint in the water treatment market with our wholly owned subsidiary, ATEC Water Systems.
We met these goals. We also had a couple of surprises. We signed five water supply agreements for 85% of the Northern Pipeline. We established an LLC partnership structure where project investors, which will include Native American tribes, will provide up to $400 million in equity capital for construction and support applications for up to $500 million in grant funding. We designed a new filter system to address PFAS removal, which I'll talk about in a second. I'm going to walk through each of these in a bit more detail so that you understand what they mean in terms of future cash flows and revenue generation to the company. We signed five water supply agreements representing 85% of the capacity of the Northern Pipeline. That's a little more than 21,000 acre-feet per year. These are contracts with AAA credit water agencies and investor-owned utilities.
These are mostly 40-year contracts. When the Northern Pipeline is operational, these agreements are expected to generate gross cash flows of between $25 million and $30 million per year, with an inflator baked in up to about 5% per year. The cash flows from these contracts with the water agencies include three components. Revenues paid to Cadiz for water supply, fees paid to the LLC for CapEx costs, including wheeling fees, and fees paid to the operating company for O&M. The agreements we signed in 2024 for the Northern Pipeline only, we expect to negotiate similar contracts for the supply from the Southern Pipeline starting later this year. We established the LLC partnership structure for development of the groundwater storage project.
This is where investors will provide up to $400 million in equity capital for construction of the pipelines, power and pumping stations, and the other facilities for operation of the groundwater bank in exchange for 51% share of the cash flows from the storage sales and banking operations and 100% ownership of the pipeline infrastructure. Cadiz will contribute the pipeline assets to the LLC in exchange for a minority interest as managing member and a share of the LLC profits from storage and banking operations above specified returns to investors. We expect Native American tribes will be majority investors in the LLC. Because of that, the project will be eligible for as much as $500 million in grant funding, most of which will come from state bond measures that have already been passed in California and will be available over the next two to three years.
We've signed letters of intent so far for up to $250 million of the $400 million in equity capital that we plan to raise towards project costs, total project costs being around $850 million. We're now in discussions with several other potential investors, both tribal and non-tribal, for the remainder of the equity capital. We're in diligence now with our lead investors, one tribal and one non-tribal. We anticipate executing term sheets over the next 60-90 days. On the ATEC side, we saw significant increase in demand in 2024 and continue to be very bullish on the growth potential for the ATEC business. We signed about two dozen sales contracts in the last 24 months, ranging in size from $50,000-$4 million, mostly for iron, manganese, arsenic, and Chromium 6.
The stat that stood out the most to me is that out of 24 contracts that we bid on in the last two years, we lost one. It's very powerful evidence of just how cost-effective our filter platform is compared to others in this space. One new development that I'm really excited about is that we designed a new filter system for the removal of PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, from groundwater. We weren't sure that we would be very competitive in this space, but our team over at ATEC designed a filter system using a modified clay medium, and we believe that the combination of this medium and our innovative system design makes this an extremely cost-effective treatment for PFAS, which many of you are aware is an enormously expensive problem for municipal water systems everywhere.
Our focus on 2025 will be on expanding our manufacturing capabilities and making a very solid entry into the PFAS market. We jumped on a few unexpected opportunities last year. First, having Native American tribes come to us as potential investors in the groundwater bank was a major turning point for the company. Tribes are the perfect public partners for this project. They have all the power of public agencies and are very sophisticated investors. This will be the first major water infrastructure project majority owned by Native American tribes in U.S. history. Second, we were approached by a Spanish company, RIC Energy, to build a hydrogen production facility at Cadiz Ranch. This wasn't the first time we'd been approached about supplying water for hydrogen production, but it was the first in terms of an approach building the production facility at Cadiz.
Hydrogen makes a ton of sense at Cadiz. We've got the only reliable new water supply, all the space you could possibly need for solar, two rail lines, two major rail lines to transport liquid hydrogen, and direct access to all the major Southwest gas network to deliver a blended product to Southern California markets. Under the agreement, RIC will lease 3,000 acres of land at Cadiz for a green hydrogen production facility, including 1,000 acres of land for solar. That can also be used along with the hydrogen to power our well field and other project facilities. Third, we were offered the chance to purchase unused steel from the abandoned Keystone XL Pipeline project.
After several months of diligence and negotiations, we signed an option agreement to purchase up to 180 miles of new 36-inch steel pipe, locking in a price for steel that allows us to significantly reduce capital costs and reduce supply chain risk. More importantly, though, the Keystone steel also allowed us to value engineer the design of the southern pipeline that will connect us to the Colorado River Aqueduct, allowing us to move more water more frequently in two directions at the same time if needed. What that translates into is the ability to generate more revenues from the water in our groundwater bank. Our focus in 2025 is on execution. We made three key hires in 2024, all on the operational side.
Cathryn Rivera, our Chief Operating Officer at Cadiz, Steve Green, Chief Commercial Officer at ATEC Water Systems, and Don Bunce, General Manager of Fenner Gap Mutual Water Company. Fenner Gap is the project company that will oversee construction and operation of the water projects. A lot of moving parts with a lot of integration required. Many of these things overlap, and they have to be sequenced and integrated in order to complete construction and begin generating revenues from the water pipeline and the assets. I am often asked, what is the best way to track success of Cadiz? The best way to answer that question is to give you our roadmap so you can track project development and the development of these four business segments. Progress on these development activities correlates to the timeline for being able to generate revenues from these assets.
Our goals in 2025 are to complete construction of the well field and energy infrastructure needed to support the water supply, storage, hydrogen, solar, and agricultural operations at Cadiz Ranch. Assist RIC Energy in the permit process for development of the hydrogen facility. Actually, I would like to attract another developer to build a second green hydrogen facility at Cadiz. I believe there are real synergies in developing more than one hydrogen facility, and we intend to pursue every opportunity. For ATEC, our goals for 2025 are to increase our production capacity to meet growing demand, demonstrate our capability to remove PFAS cost-effectively, and make a very solid entry into that market.
On the water supply and groundwater banking, our focus in Q1 is to stand up the NewCo and the LLC, all the financing entities and project companies, and execute commercial agreements and EPC contracts for construction and operation of the Mojave Groundwater Bank. Second, we want to secure the capital for the construction of the groundwater bank through the LLC and also through a joint financing authority with our public agency partners. We want to work with our tribal and community partners to apply for grant funding. That is a time-sensitive issue starting this year. Ultimately, we want to break ground on conversion of the Northern Pipeline this year to meet our target date of beginning water deliveries on the Northern Pipeline in 2026. Finally, I want to say a word about the recent fires in Los Angeles.
Many investors have asked me how this disaster will impact policies on water supply, infrastructure, and Cadiz. First of all, we found a way to help with the fires by scrambling a fleet of trucks to deploy at CAL FIRE staging areas ahead of the extremely dangerous wind events. This kind of extreme weather fueling incredible fire danger is part of a new normal in the Southwest. To the extent Cadiz can help by marshaling private sector resources for deployment of mobile water supplies to help first responders, we will continue to do so. We established a nonprofit entity called Cadiz Fire Response Fund that can be found on the Cadiz website for investors and partner companies who are willing to help with financial resources to fund that effort. People have also asked me if the fires will force a shift in policy priorities to fund water infrastructure.
My answer is that the policy priorities had already shifted dramatically after the last major drought. The recent drought changed everything about the politics between the haves and the have-nots in the Southwest. California in particular put a major focus on repairing and rebuilding, and building new water supply and storage infrastructure backed up by billions of dollars in bond funding that will be available over the next two to three years. If you look at Proposition 1 from 2014 and Proposition 4, which just passed on the 2024 ballot. What this fire disaster did is bring into stark relief that we don't have a water supply problem. We have a water infrastructure problem. All this talk of water scarcity, wells going dry during droughts, hydrants going dry during fires, it's not about water supply.
The Earth has the same amount of water today as it did 4 billion years ago. It's the hydrology that has changed because of an increase in temperatures. Less snow, more rain. Less snowpack in the north, more atmospheric rivers in the south. Virtually all of our water infrastructure was designed to capture, store, and transport snow melt and direct floodwaters to the ocean. It will take many hundreds of billions of dollars to build new water infrastructure where it is needed to address the new hydrology. The door is open to private sector investment in critical infrastructure as it has never been before. My philosophy has been to partner with the have-nots, the underserved communities that don't have access to this infrastructure.
We've been investing in the infrastructure that can serve these communities for a decade now because we knew this day would come, and that day is here. Because we leaned in to investing in the infrastructure, we are in the right place at the right time to be a major part of the solution. I'm going to turn the call over to Stan Speer, our CFO, to give a brief financial update and then open it up to questions.
Thank you, Susan. Susan noted that towards the end of the year, in November 2024, we completed an equity financing that netted the company approximately $21.9 million in cash. When added with existing cash, it provided runway for us to continue project development as we established the new LLC. The net proceeds are being utilized for the $5 million option payment for the Keystone Steel pipe and approximately $6 million in capital costs to advance project facility construction on the current timeline. The balance is being used for working capital. At the end of our fiscal year, on 12/31, we had approximately $17.4 million in cash on hand. We will report our 12/31 GAAP financials in March 2025. We do expect that the $11 million in capital costs that I mentioned will be reimbursed to Cadiz by the LLC when that is put full up and funded.
On the debt side, based upon our latest published financials as of 9/30/2024, we had $41.7 million in senior secured debt. $21.2 million of that is not convertible and pays interest at 7% per annum. $20.5 million is currently convertible into common stock at a price of $5.14 and accrues interest on a PIK basis at 7% per annum. We also have an unsecured convertible tranche totaling $16.6 million, which is convertible into common stock at $4.80, and also accrues interest on a PIK basis at 7% per annum. We have no debt due until June 2027, when these three tranches mature. That concludes my summary report. I'll turn it back over to the operator for the Q&A portion of the call.
Thank you. At this time, we will conduct a question and answer session. We will begin the question and answer session by answering first previously submitted questions. Live questions may be submitted by using the Q&A icon at the bottom of your screen. I will turn the call back over to Courtney to moderate the Q&A portion of the call. Courtney, please proceed.
Thank you. We have allocated about 20 minutes for questions. We will take some that were submitted previously. I'll switch over to the Q&A at the bottom. I'm working through this. Hopefully we can figure out the technology of it. Here we go. First one. Susan, did I understand you to say you're in discussions with investors to raise the entire $400 million in equity capital needed for construction of the Groundwater Banking Project?
Yes. We signed LOIs with two lead investors for about $250 million, and we have been in discussion with about six or seven for the last couple of months. I believe that we will be oversubscribed for the LLC.
Great. All right. Next question we have here is the change in federal administration, help or hurt? President Trump signed several executive orders yesterday. Any benefits to Cadiz?
Good question. There's two answers to that. First is, we're so far along in our permitting process and our development process that the change in administration, nobody can really help or hurt us at this point in terms of the development of the project, because we're so far along. It could possibly speed up some of the processes we have, two environmental studies that need to be done could maybe speed it up a little bit more, but I think we're pretty far along. The executive orders on water are interesting. What he can do for Southern California in the short term is kind of unclear because, like I said, it's not a water supply problem, it's a water infrastructure problem.
Any loosening up of environmental restrictions on pumping water south are not really going to be helpful immediately, and they're not helpful in the long term because you need places to put water, to hold water, right? You need water in the next drought. I don't think that has much of a big effect. We are expecting that the Colorado River negotiations are coming up, and we're hearing rumors that the administration may just roll over the existing Colorado River framework that's in place instead of putting in new rules, as was attempted to do, and that could be really good for us in terms of the value of our water supply only goes up. We're the largest new water resource in the Southwest. We are the only new water supply in the Colorado River basin.
To the extent that we're able to supply reliable, affordable water supply in this area, like the Inland Empire, that means more water is going to be available from other parts of the state to go to Los Angeles. Means that more water will be available in parts of the Southwest. Our water supply becomes more valuable to all the players in the Southwest. I think we'll see what happens.
There was a related follow-up question about the executive order that throws funding for climate programs under the IRA. Did you see any impact on that front?
We knew that. I think the election did shake things up a bit. One of our first LOIs was with a nonprofit investment fund with funding through the EPA, through the Inflation Reduction Act. That funding was actually received last year by them. We've been told that those funds have already been allocated in a way that makes it not easy to pull back those funds. As soon as the election happened, and we knew that any of this funding could be in question, we were not taking any chances. We immediately started talking to other potential investors that could come in. That's why we're now in discussions with a number of investors so that we're not dependent on any one source of funds. That's why I also believe that we will be oversubscribed.
We received several questions about the fires in L.A. You've addressed most of it, I think, in your remarks. One nuanced was, how do you get water to L.A. from the Cadiz project? Have the fires altered your strategy?
Not altered our strategy. It just really highlights the fact that right now, the areas that we live in the Southwest, they're pumping water. These are major communities. They're pumping water all the way from the State Water Project over the Tehachapis to fill groundwater basins up in the Mojave River Basin. These areas in the Inland Empire dependent upon water from hundreds of miles away in the Colorado River. To the extent that our water resources become available to those communities, it means more water can stay closer to its origin. That means more water can go to that part of the east branch of the Metropolitan Water District that was really impacted heavily by those fires. Water doesn't want to travel hundreds of miles uphill, right? It wants to stay local.
By providing a cost-effective water supply where we are located, it frees up water resources in other areas that are desperately impacted by the fires.
Okay, changing up a bit. How does the recently announced hydrogen land lease fall into the overall business? Is it part of the water project or a separate development like ATEC?
It's separate but overlapping because energy is the single greatest cost of water, right? Moving water. The ability to build production facilities at Cadiz and integrate some technologies like perhaps some fuel cells that can utilize hydrogen. It's green hydrogen because it's using our water. There's some synergies there that would lower our costs to be able to tap into those resources. The same with solar. If we are co-locating or we just overbuild the solar infrastructure so that we can absorb some of that energy, it definitely can lower our costs. We're looking for those synergies and the communities we're working with are up in Barstow and that area. They're building a major rail station up there. All those communities up in Victor Valley, there's a lot of investment in water infrastructure up there that we're a part of, and they all need energy.
I see the opportunity for a clean energy corridor to be developing out in this part of San Bernardino County, and the county itself is foursquare behind the development of these resources. There's a ton of bond funding available for these resources. I see synergies that lower our costs in the water projects.
Okay. Related to the NewCo LLC structure, where are you on the LOIs that have been entered into for construction finance with your prospective partners?
I think I said that we're in diligence. We're deep in diligence, looking at the engineering independent expert reports, the hydrology expert reports. Putting together the design engineering to the point where we can have some confidence in a construction schedule. All of that is we're deep into the diligence in terms of being able to finance what is essentially close to a billion-dollar project. I'm hoping those can translate into term sheets in the near future.
Okay. Can you provide a high-level timeline for connection of the southern pipeline to the CRA, the Colorado River Aqueduct?
We're working backwards from a goal of wanting to be able to have the bank fully operational by the end of 2027. That's aggressive, okay? This is a new build, I know that's aggressive. We wanted to come in when the Colorado River negotiations were at their peak because the value of our assets is going to be top of mind while the lower basin states are negotiating the future of the Colorado River. In order to be operational on that timeframe, we have to be in construction in 2026 on that. That's a new build that's going to be 24, 36 months of construction time, depending on the lead time for ordering equipment. Our goal is to get everything in place, get the financing structure in place, and be in construction 2026 on the southern pipeline.
How much additional water outside of what has been currently contracted can you sell annually without depleting the reservoir? Thank you.
Well, the groundwater basin has, we now know, between 30 million and 50 million acre-feet of water in it. It is larger than Lake Mead times two. Every drop of water in the groundwater basin has one exit point, and that goes across our well field at Cadiz Ranch. This is a closed basin, the top of the watershed is 7,500 feet in the New York mountains, and the bottom of the watershed is at where Fenner Gap is at 900 feet. All that water has one place to go, across there. We know that the natural recharge rate is somewhere in the 40,000-plus range, 35,000 and 45,000 acre-feet per year plus range.
The project is designed to be able to capture that water before it turns into brine and evaporates and create hydraulic control of the water flow down to the dry lake, so that we can import surface water and hold it without losing it to evaporation. Our current permit is with the county, allows us to export 2.5 million acre-feet over a 50-year period. That's export capability. We can use as much water on farm as we want, as long as we don't drop the water table more than 80 feet. We couldn't drop the water table if we wanted to because of the angle of the aquifer and how much water is in there. Well, there's a ton of additional resources available, and Well, most of our contracts are 40-year take or pay contracts, instead of 50 years.
We have surplus water under our current permit, about 0.5 million acre-feet of water that's not going to be permitted, that's not going to be contracted with the water agencies. That's the water that we started donating to the disadvantaged communities that we're working with, so that in exchange for them joining the financing authority and applying for the grants to pay for the infrastructure. I expect we'll be able to, when we're finished with the designing the southern pipeline and the Mojave Groundwater Bank, I believe we'll be able to get flexibility in the permit that will allow us to access more water resources. How much, I can't tell you. I can just tell you that I've seen the data that shows that there's a lot more water you can access from that watershed as the water's leaving the watershed without causing any adverse environmental impact.
I expect there'll be more water resources available in the future.
Okay. Just a reminder for our guests. We have about 10 minutes left for questions, and I've moved to the Q&A submitted questions in the portal. If you have any questions, please submit there, and we'll try and get through as many as we can. This question is related to something you talked about at the top, the Donald Trump administration's executive orders on green energy. This question has a nuance on can any of those grants be made up at the state level? What's the state-level grant picture?
A lot of the federal programs are going to be up in the air. Some of them are federal tax credits that were in place, and we don't expect them to be moved. Some programs were in place long before the Inflation Reduction Act, there will be some federal grant programs that we think will remain available. The bulk of the grant funding for infrastructure comes at the state level. California made a huge investment in water infrastructure starting more than 10 years ago. Proposition 1 was passed in 2014. It had several billion dollars for water storage. Most of the storage projects are up north, and there's some funds that are left over from projects that didn't make it through their process, or they dropped out. There's several hundred million dollars from Prop 1 that will have to be reallocated. We're uniquely eligible for those funds.
It'll be legislatively appropriated to other pots that we'll apply for. Prop 4, that passed on the November ballot, is a $10 billion climate bond. There's about $3 billion in that that is specifically aimed at clean water infrastructure, and we're uniquely eligible for that. Not only our groundwater bank, but also the regional projects that we're intersecting with. We think that that's the bulk of the funds for us will come from those two pots of money. The governor has indicated they're going to try to take as much of the funding from the climate bond to help L.A. recover from the fires. There's $7 or $8 billion in there that's related to climate resiliency that I think will be the first dollars steered. I don't think there'll be that much competition for the water infrastructure projects in that climate bond, there could be.
There's a lot of money. We're the only major water storage project that's going to come online in the next five years, 10 years, in Southern California. We think we're uniquely eligible.
Okay. Switching to an ATEC-related question. Can you talk through a little more the PFAS filtration system you mentioned? How does it work? Is there a potential revenue stream there? How much does it cost?
Well, our system is a filter system, so it's hardware. Right? The platform is the filter itself and the balance of plant that actually goes into the water filtration system. What you use in that is a medium that uses different chemicals and different chemistries and different designs that pulls contaminants out of the water. There's a filter designed for iron and manganese. We designed a filter for chromium-6. We've been using it at the ranch. We have a little bit of elevated chromium-6 in our water. We designed one for arsenic that we're pulling that out of water, particularly in Eastern Coachella Valley and some areas, naturally occurring arsenic. What the guys at ATEC did was they're using this relatively new medium of clay absorption, a particular type of clay.
We signed a partnership with a producer of that material, those minerals, to be able to use that medium in our filter system. Because of the unique design of our filtration system, which is these smaller vertical tanks, we're coming in at half the cost of some of the bigger projects. Our margins are really good, but we can process the same amount of water as the big guys at a significantly lower capital cost, and a lower operating cost as well. That's why we're so competitive in the market. It's this combination of a medium that is effective at removing PFOS and our innovative system that makes this a really powerful product we can put on the market.
We're expecting the ATEC segment. We bought that company, we bought the assets for $2 million three years ago, we were generating $15, 16, $17 million in gross revenues two years later. It's throwing EBITDA to us of between $3 and $4 million two years later. This is a super, really good investment for us, and we see scalability in this market.
Thanks.
For the investors that don't know us, the fact that we have a unique combination of assets, we can now pair water treatment with water supply. We can pair water storage and treatment. As we're delivering water into other systems at a higher quality than the water that's in there are monetary benefits to that. We can pair all these different water assets, including treatment, which is accretive to the value of all the water products that we can sell. In addition to being a standalone business segment where we're selling filters all across the western United States and North America. Sorry, I can't hear you. You lost your audio.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Okay. We have a related question about selling the filtration business. Are any opportunities to divest it? Have you considered that at all?
I haven't thought about it yet. I think we've got a lot of opportunities in front of us as we grow this business.
One question, can you describe the strategic position for water banking and trading between locations? How do you envision that operating?
I think that's the biggest opportunity that we bring to the table. It's not something that I think a traditional utility business model could do, it opens up value that this company couldn't even envision 10 years ago. We've got, call it 30 million acre-feet of water already in storage at our groundwater banks. That means that water that's stored at Lake Mead by, say, Metropolitan or major agencies, could be traded for water that's stored at Cadiz. Our water is more valuable. It doesn't evaporate. Every other location, you lose 20% to evaporation just by storing it at an open air reservoir or transporting it via open air canals. There are monetary penalties for that. There's a leave behind of 10%-20%. Right?
We could trade water stored at Cadiz at a premium for water that's stored in other storage banks. We could be the exchange agent between water rights holders in the Colorado system with water rights holders in the State Water Project system, literally swapping water that's currently stored in different reservoirs because water is generally traded on paper. Right? There's arbitrage value, there's exchange value, and there's storage value. We could advance water and then replace it with water from Lake Mead later on. It's like tons of opportunity. Our bank will be the largest and first really functioning water bank in almost in a financial sense, with water as the currency, that is in the Southwest.
A sort of related question to that. Does the credit still exist for creating water on the Colorado River system? I think that's a term.
There you go. It is in the current rules. If the administration, if the new administration just rolls over the existing rules, that means that the, what's called the incrementally created surplus credit would likely roll over as well. I always believed there would be a future for that. The fact, if it rolls over, it's a very valuable credit to us because our water, every drop of water that we extract is water that would otherwise evaporate, which means it's new water. That's why it's a new water supply, and that qualifies as incrementally created surplus, non-tributary to the Colorado River. That has several hundred dollars an acre-foot value in the system when our water is traded. Yeah, we think that ICS credit is something that's very valuable and we hope sticks around if they roll over the rules.
Okay. I think we have time for one or two more questions. You mentioned $25 million-$30 million in cash flow for water supply. Is that for Cadiz or the projects where we're a minority owner?
That is the gross water supply Where is my Here it is. That's the gross cash flows from a water contract. Illustratively, the Northern Pipeline is, on average, about $1,600 per acre-foot is the cap that the contracts are operating under. There's three components to that. What comes to Cadiz is approximately $850 per acre-foot per year over the life of the contract, call it 40 years, with an escalator. On top of that, from that $1,600 per acre-foot, a certain portion would go to the NewCo to pay for the capital costs for financing, and a certain portion would be to cover the operating costs, including wheeling fees, and just the O&M. There's three components to that. What comes to Cadiz is the commodity price for the water.
The same will be true for the Southern Pipeline as well.
Okay, related. One more, I think we have time for. Outside of water contracts and ATEC and the NewCo, are there other possible revenue sources that might accrue to Cadiz in the future?
I'm very bullish on hydrogen, number one, because I do believe that we can develop more than one hydrogen facility there because we have so much land, we have so much water, and there are real synergies. There's some plans on the drawing board to build what's called the Angeles Link by SoCalGas, which would be a dedicated hydrogen pipeline system. We're not involved in the process, we're just aware of it. We have multiple hydrogen facilities out there. I think it's a really good opportunity for us to develop our land resources like that, number one. I think we're not just one project anymore. Our pipeline system, when it's fully operational, is more than 300 miles in length, spanning between the Colorado system and the State Water Project system and intersecting with other pipelines.
There are projects all along the route that we can participate in. I think there's project after project that we have parallel projects that we can actually get into, which I think generate new revenue streams to Cadiz. We're working on the first project. We're working on right now getting the groundwater bank and the pipelines up and running, but there are some tremendous opportunities for additional pipelines and additional projects.
Okay. I think with that, we are over time a little bit, and we received a lot of great questions. I will turn it back to you, Susan, to conclude. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you. We'll look at the questions and see if we can't post. Do we have emails for people?
Yeah. We'll be able to. Anything we didn't get to, we can email. We will post a transcript of this call and the deck that you utilized on our investor page. Feel free to email me any follow-up questions or request any calls with Susan or Stan.
Great. Appreciate everyone's time. We're really excited about where we're at and the future of the company, and we're very appreciative of all the investors who've stayed with us for so long and for the new investors who are just now giving us the rocket fuel to take it to the next level. Thank you, everybody.
Thank you. Operator, you can conclude the call.
Thank you. That concludes today's conference. We will now close the call. Enjoy the rest of your day.