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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Standing tall
Dean Baker stood for this 2007 Las Vegas Sun portrait in the water of Big Springs, Snake Valley, Nevada, part of the Great Basin Carbonate Aquifer system targeted by Las Vegas. For 20 years, Baker has been the face of the opposition to the Las Vegas pipeline project, both for rural Nevada, where he lives, and the neighboring West Desert of central Utah, where he was born and raised. In 2007, at the behest of his childhood neighbors in Utah, Baker joined an Utahan negotiating team tasked by Congress to agree how much water, if any, Utah would consent to Nevada removing from Snake Valley, a basin shared by both states. Patricia Mulroy, Las Vegas water manager and founder of the nearly 300-mile-long pipeline project, decried Baker's appointment as political brinksmanship. However, Utah Director of Natural Resources Mike Styler said at the time of Baker, "He's a courageous person ...
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