2009

“This is the evening for a renewed call to focus on water …” - Timothy Brick, chairman of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (pictured far right), moderating “A National Water Policy Event,” sponsored by the Chronicles Group, Tuesday July 28, 2009 in the US Capitol Visitor Center

“…we estimate that almost 19,000 bottles were not sold and used.” – Stephen Winman in the Santa Fe New Mexican on an art festival serving local tap water instead of bottled

“The ads suggest viewers go to Tappening.com to find out ‘the truth’ about bottled water, or to StartALie.com to spread an untruth.” – New York Times, “An Environmental Group’s Campaign of Wry Lies Against Bottled Water”

How it’s done in the desert

A REMORSELESS game of political chess being played out by the two driest states in the country moved inexorably toward checkmate last week in Washington DC.

Mount Wheeler, the peak whose snowmelt feeds this stream in the Great Basin Desert, stands in Nevada. But Wheeler’s water serves Snake Valley, which straddles the Nevada-Utah border.

Congressional maneuvering over which state has the rights to how much of Mt Wheeler’s water began in 2004, when in a land bill pushed by the Nevada delegation, Congress granted right of way for a Las Vegas pipeline that would eventually run hundreds of miles into the Great Basin to tap Snake Valley.

But hours before the vote, Utah Senator Bob Bennett slipped a clause into the bill dictating that no water could be taken from border valleys without Utah’s consent.

As negotiations took months, then years, Southern Nevada Water Authority General Manager Pat Mulroy…