To be fair

A friend of mine once summed up his bitching about an enemy by laughingly declaring, “I talked her down so bad that I made her look good.”

Today in Las Vegas City Life,Ā investigative reporter and columnist George Knapp talks down Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Pat Mulroy so bad that he makes her look good. For years now, Knapp has been the most consistent, the most outspoken critic of Mulroy’s plans for a 300-mile-long pipeline into Nevada’s Great Basin. Usually his reporting is good. It’s always rollicking. It is has been widely reported, for instance, including by Knapp, that a new study on the cost of the pipeline suggests that the ultimate price far exceeds earlier projections, that instead of $3bn it might cost $7.3bn, or even $15bn including financing.

This would buy a lot of conservation or water trades.

But is it by extension a

The grass is always browner on the other side

WHEN George Knapp rumbles, people who care about water listen, even people routinely savaged by him. In April, Knapp and photojournalist Matt Adams won the prestigious George Foster Peabody Award for their KLAS-TV special “Crossfire: Water, Power and Politics,” which gave voice to the outrage and incredulity among conservationists, farmers and scientists over a bid by Las Vegas to drive a 300-mile-long pipeline into the heart of the Great Basin to pump its ground water south.

If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Few evening news programs attempt, never mind master, complicated essays on the cost of urban water in the West. This one does.

As disclosure, I should say that I too addressed the Las Vegas / Great Basin story in a year-long special assignment for the Las Vegas Sun. And by way of bragging, I will add that I too won a prize.

So

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    Emily Green by e-mail at emily.green [at] mac.com
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