Pipeline? What pipeline?
IF August 20th in Las Vegas proved anything, it’s what can happen when a publicity stunt backfires.
What had been hyped by a local newspaper and Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, as an “up-or-down” vote on the Las Vegas pipeline project soon gave way to embarrassed disclaimers from members of the SNWA board. They were ”not voting upon starting to build a pipeline” assured director after director but rather “voting upon continuing a process to pursue environmental permits.”
The meeting room was packed with Nevadans there to beg the SNWA board for mercy or sing the praises of White Pine County, the place of springs and seeps that SNWA’s proposed 300-mile pipeline would tap most heavily (photos above). After 20 years of pursuing the pipeline project, SNWA general manager Pat Mulroy has the stomach to face down pudgy-cheeked, cap-in-hand octogenarian ranchers whose family farms her …
Vegas blinks
BREAKING NEWS: The much vaunted “up or down” vote on the proposed Great Basin pipeline that General Manager Pat Mulroy reportedly demanded of her board at the Southern Nevada Water Authority today descended into a long, polite and more than a little bit bizarre political retreat. Rather than confront her board to commit to the pipeline, as it was reported that Mulroy would do by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mulroy instead asked it for permission to do what she was doing already: Cooperating with the ongoing US Bureau of Land Management environmental review process and hammering out a Snake Valley monitoring agreement.…
Secret of vanishing water
NASA's Grace satellites measured the depletion of groundwater in northwestern India between 2002 and 2008. Image: NASA/Trent Schindler and Matt Rodell
PASADENA, Calif, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Using NASA satellite data, scientists have found that groundwater levels in northern India have been declining by as much as 33 centimeters (1 foot) per year over the past decade. Researchers concluded the loss is almost entirely due to human activity. For the full story, click here.…
Heartbreak, anger in the West Desert
“DOES anyone think Southern Nevada [Water Authority] is going to build a $15 billion pipeline and then let somebody turn it off?” — Snake Valley rancher Cecil Garland, pictured above center.…
The decades that were, 1989-2009
OWING to events out of Nevada and Utah, the regular Monday feature, “The week that was” is pre-empted this week for “The decades that were.” The Southern Nevada Water Authority board meeting scheduled this week comes only two months shy of the 20th anniversary of the (then) newly appointed Las Vegas water manager Patricia Mulroy stunning Nevada with applications for half of the estimated groundwater then legally unclaimed in the state — for Las Vegas.
This Thursday, after two decades of largely unfettered growth in Greater Las Vegas, Mrs Mulroy’s board will give her an up-or-down vote on whether they wish to proceed with construction of the almost 300-mile-long pipeline, estimated cost $3.5bn, that tapping this water in five initial basins would require. To watch it live online starting at 9am, click here.
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