Kay sera sera
Kay Brothers retires this week as Deputy General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. There will probably be parties and there should be toasts, during which she may be heralded as a force in developing groundwater storage programs for the Las Vegas Valley Water District in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Even her worst critics would have to raise a glass. The kind of storage of Colorado River water undertaken by Brothers and Terry Katzer, the man who hired her in 1986 at the SNWA seed agency, was a model of progressive water management in a desert where evaporation empties reservoirs with sparkling remorselessness — and in a valley where subsidence is measured in feet, not inches.
However, it is unlikely that she will be remembered for that. Rather, second only to her boss Pat Mulroy, Brothers has been Justifier-in-Chief for the Las Vegas pipeline project unveiled in …
Surrender Dorothy
Abandoned buildings in Pioche, Lincoln County, Nevada. The county partnered with Vidler Water Co. out of the belief that this would protect its groundwater reserves from predation by Las Vegas. Instead, Vidler partnered with Las Vegas and a massive private developer. The benefit to towns like Pioche, other than sharing water revenue with Vidler, remains unclear.
Talk about Westerns: Over the weekend, Henry Brean of the Las Vegas Review Journal, dusted down a honey of a grudge match.
It’s in Nevada, and Nevada being the driest state in the union, it’s about water.
To the south, we have Patricia Mulroy, the blonde general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, who formed her agency expressly around the idea of building a nearly 300-mile-long pipeline into the wild heart of the state to sustain otherwise impossible growth around Las Vegas.
To the north, there is the brunette. Dorothy Timian-Palmer, …
Notes on a skirmish
Goliath wasn’t really trying, didn’t really want to win and it never really was a contest. That’s the upshot of the response from the Southern Nevada Water Authority after a proposed amendment to do with its massive haul of water awards out of central Nevada failed to pass during the special session of state legislature, which closed early Monday.
Those opposing the amendment along with the SNWA’s proposed pipeline into the heart of the state claimed a huge victory. Dozens of Vegas lobbyists turned away! A great day for justice, the small man, everything good!
The Las Vegas water authority shrugged it off, saying that it had been working for the amendment in Carson City simply to help a beleaguered state natural resources agency protect thousands of water awards threatened as a byproduct of a nuisance suit brought by the pipeline protestors.…
Nevada head of Natural Resources: I am not carrying the water for SNWA
Updated 10.16am 3/1/2010. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Nevada Legislature will send the proposed water bill to committee before disbanding its special session today. Governor Jim Gibbons may recall legislature for a vote on it once the bill is out of committee.
Governor Jim Gibbons’ instruction to the Nevada legislature to amend state law in a way that would retroactively legalize water awards made since 1947 will not render moot a recent state Supreme Court decision that threatens the future of a controversial Las Vegas pipeline project, a senior state official said today.
Rather, Allen Biaggi, head of the Nevada Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, insisted that the Governor’s instruction has been accompanied by proposed language that excludes from amnesty any awards made to the Southern Nevada Water Authority.
However, as pipeline protestors read the same document, they say they are better off staying in the …
The screw turns
Updated 10.16am 3/1/2010. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that the Nevada Legislature will send the proposed water bill to committee before disbanding its special session today. Governor Jim Gibbons may recall legislature for a vote on it once the bill is out of committee.
NEVADA Governor Jim Gibbons all but gave back what late last month the state supreme court took away when today he released formal instruction to the state legislature to revise a law “concerning the time in which the State Engineer must act upon a water rights application so that [it] applies retroactively to all applications filed with the State Engineer between July 1, 1947 and July 1, 2003 and so that provisions … apply retroactively to pending applications and applications/permits under appeal involving certain transfers of groundwater.”
The upshot? Fasten your seatbelt for some time travel. Those who protested the nearly 300-mile-long pipeline planned by …
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