“Underground Rivers”

Via WaterWired: A draft version of the new book “Underground Rivers from the River Styx to the Rio San Buenaventura with occasional diversions” by University of New Mexico engineer Richard J. Heggen is available to download for free. For a fuller background on Heggen, go to WaterWired. To download the draft chapters, click here.

Saints to bow to Vegas, reports flagship LDS paper

SALT LAKE CITY — A proposed water-sharing agreement in Snake Valley between Nevada and Utah appears destined for signature by the two states as additional revisions were aired in a Wednesday meeting of an advisory council, reports the Deseret News.

Nevada officials indicated at the Snake Valley Advisory Council meeting that they are on board with the agreement as it stands, and John Harja, chairman of the council, conveyed that Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is convinced that “an agreement is better than none, and the interests of Utah are best served by an agreement.”

To keep reading today’s report in the Deseret news, click here or here for the Salt Lake Tribune account. Via the Great Basin Network and Aquafornia, which also has an AP account of public response.

Speculation aside, there is still hope that Utah Governor Herbert won’t sign. The Great Basin Water Network was founded

Central Valley groundwater mining detected from space

Approximate location of maximum subsidence in the United States identified by research efforts of Dr. Joseph F. Poland (pictured). Signs on pole show approximate altitude of land surface in 1925, 1955, and 1977. The site is in the San Joaquin Valley southwest of Mendota, California. Source: USGS. Click on the image to be taken to a groundwater subsidence fact sheet.

PASADENA, California — New space observations reveal that since October 2003, the aquifers for California’s primary agricultural region — the Central Valley — and its major mountain water source — the Sierra Nevadas — have lost nearly enough water combined to fill Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, reports the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. To keep reading the JPL news release, click here.

Legislation that would have required monitoring of groundwater in the Central Valley was gutted at the last minute from the raft of water bills passed by the

Item 5

Updated 11/19/2009 9.21am PST

ITEM 5 on the agenda for this Thursday’s board meeting of the Southern Nevada Water Authority calls for the directors to take an October 15, 2009 decision by a Nevada district judge Norman C. Robison to the state Supreme Court.

The Robison decision deemed a 2008 award of water to Las Vegas and the SNWA by the State Engineer of Nevada from three Lincoln County valleys  “arbitrary, oppressive and a manifest abuse of discretion.” It then vacated the award for water in the three valleys that are the key first staging grounds of a nearly 300-mile-long pipeline that Las Vegas plans to run into the heart of the state to pump rural groundwater.

Why did the judge rule the way he did? According to Robison, the water — 18,755 acre feet of it a year (or enough for 37,000 homes) — isn’t there. “The state engineer

Interior appropriations chair questions legality of Cadiz pipeline right-of-way

US SENATOR Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Interior appropriations committee, has challenged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to certify the legality of plans by Cadiz Inc to use a 42-mile-long stretch of a Mojave railway line for part of a groundwater project in San Bernardino County.

Meanwhile, lobbyists for the speculators behind the project, Cadiz Inc, have been courting Southland public utilities to sign on to the project, possibly including a lucrative groundwater contract with the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power.

UPDATE: 8/31/2009, 4.02pm  — Cadiz reply after the jump

FURTHER UPDATE: 9/2/2009 — LADWP update after the jump

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