Water politics.

The stock of Los Angeles-based water storage company Cadiz Inc. tumbled 9 percent last week as a political play on a regional water board unraveled, dashing any hopes for revival of a controversial Cadiz water storage plan.

Last week, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa reportedly lost his bid to install former state Assemblyman Richard Katz as chief executive of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the massive wholesale water agency for the region.

Katz served as an advisor on water issues to former Gov. Gray Davis and is a close personal friend of Villaraigosa. In addition, Cadiz chief executive Keith Brackpool contributed more than $50,000 to Villaraigosa's two campaigns for L.A. mayor.

Speculation had mounted during the week that if he were at the helm, Katz would push to revive a $150 million project to store Colorado River water underneath a Mojave Desert tract owned by Cadiz. The MWD board killed the Cadiz project in late 2002 after fierce opposition from environmentalists who contended that a local aquifer would be harmed.

According to a news report in the Los Angeles Times, the MWD board on Feb. 7 instead decided to award the chief executive post to an insider, MWD general counsel Jeffrey Kightlinger. MWD officials would not confirm the news report.

Nonetheless, the thinly traded Cadiz stock headed south last week from a Feb. 2 opening of $20.50 per share to a Feb. 9 closing of $18.70 a share, a drop of 8.8 percent.

Courtney Degener, investor relations manager for Cadiz, said there was no news from the company that could account for the movement in the stock price. She added the stock has shown a lot of movement in the past couple months.

Degener said the company had no comment on last week's developments at the MWD.