High Good, Low Bad: May Elevations on Mead
Posted on | June 1, 2009 | No Comments
Lake Mead is the Colorado River Reservoir holding water supplies for California, Arizona, Nevada and Mexico. The maximum elevation is 1,229 feet. Below, gleaned from US Bureau of Reclamation records, are year-on-year May elevation reports going back to 2004. Also borrowed from Reclamation is a nifty graphic published on Friday, May 8, 2009 showing April and May 2009 elevations. The May elevations were largely estimates (in yellow). Kudos to the graphic artist. The actual closing elevation for May 31, 2009 was 1,096.92.
DATE ELEVATION OF LAKE MEAD
May 31, 2009: 1,096.92
May 31, 2008: 1,107.05
May 31, 2007: 1,115.89
May 31, 2006: 1,131.14
May 31, 2005: 1,141.89
May 31, 2004: 1,129.70
For April Elevations, click here
Vegas Draws Line on Mead Lakeside as Trigger Point to Build Pipeline to Great Basin Ground Water
Posted on | June 1, 2009 | No Comments
JUST in case any of the board members of the Southern Nevada Water Authority have become squeamish lately about mining the Great Basin Aquifer to sustain growth in Las Vegas, they have been given a deadline to approve building the 300-mile-long pipeline that they will need to pump the Great Basin’s ground water water south. The deadline will come when the elevation of Lake Mead, the Colorado River reservoir that currently supplies roughly 90% of Las Vegas’s water, drops another 23 feet or reaches 1,075 feet.
From today’s story by Henry Brean in the Las Vegas Review Journal:
- Board members have already approved the pipeline concept and signed off on ongoing efforts to secure water rights and environmental permits, but they have never actually voted to build the project
- That decision will come if, or perhaps when, the surface of Lake Mead sinks to elevation 1,075, a low-water mark not seen since 1937 when the reservoir was being filled for the first time
- Current projections by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation call for Lake Mead to remain above 1,075 for the next two years at least. The closest it is expected to come is in July, when the reservoir is projected to slip below elevation 1,092 for the first time since March 1965
Behind the board deadline is a supposition by SNWA general manager Patricia Mulroy that the Great Basin pipeline project cannot and will not be stopped, even though environmental reviews by the Interior agencies remain outstanding, a Nevada Supreme Court case decision over due process for protestors is being heard, Utah has yet to sign off on water being exported from basins next to its border, and even the final water allocation to one of the most fecund basins in the pipeline plan hasn’t been made.
The due process case goes before the Nevada Supreme Court this morning at 10.30am.
For May 2004-2009 Lake Mead elevations, click here.
Mandatory Conservation Begins in Los Angeles
Posted on | June 1, 2009 | No Comments
Water conservation becomes mandatory in Los Angeles today. New rules:
SPRINKLERS
YES: Water your lawn for 15 minutes per station or sprinkler, or 10 minutes for other types of irrigation systems
YES: Water on Monday and Thursday
NO: Water between 9 am and 4pm
NO: Water Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday
NO: Allow runoff into the street
HOSES / PIPES
NO: Use water on hard surfaces such as sidewalks, driveways and parking lots
NO: Leave a leak unfixed
NO: Washing a car with a hose without a shut-off nozzle on the hoze
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Los Angeles Department of Water and Power > watering restrictions
“Huge Signal” of Change from Columbia River Salmon
Posted on | May 31, 2009 | No Comments
MAY 30, 2009. BONNEVILLE DAM – Run of small salmon on the Columbia River baffles anglers, scientists, Seattle Times. ”Just looking at the Bonneville Dam count, it’s extraordinary,” says Brian Beckman, a National Marine Fisheries Service biologist in Seattle. “It’s just kind of jaw-dropping … There is a huge signal from the fish that something has changed.”
Nevada Supreme Court to Judge State Engineer
Posted on | May 29, 2009 | No Comments
ASK any of the rural Nevadans who stand to lose their water to Las Vegas and its proposed 300-mile pipeline into central Nevada if the proceedings were fair, and they will laugh at your naivete. For them, Las Vegas gamed the table before the rural communities even knew that a game was on. One of their last recourses to stop the pipeline is a suit coming before the Nevada Supreme Court on Monday at 10.30am.
The court’s summary of Great Basin Water Network versus the State Engineer of Nevada reads: “In 1989, the predecessor to the Southern Nevada Water Authority filed applications for unappropriated water rights from rural Nevada for use in Las Vegas. More than 800 interested persons filed protests. In 2005, the State Engineer notified roughly 300 of the interested persons that a prehearing conference would be held to discuss the water rights applications. Some organizations and individuals petitioned the State Engineer to re-notice the 1989 applications and reopen the period for filing protests. After the State Engineer denied the request, appellants filed a petition for judicial review in the White Pine County District Court. That petition was denied and appellants are now appealing that decision. ISSUES: Did the State Engineer deprive appellants of the right to due process and/or equal protection by refusing to re-notice the groundwater applications? Did the State Engineer violate his statutory duties by not ruling on the 1989 application within one year?”
Mike Turnipseed, the State Engineer who originally received the protests has since become a paid consultant for Las Vegas.
The “more than 800” protests cited in the case description were in fact more than 3,000. As the legal protest period to the original 1989 applications neared closing in August 1990, the number of protests had surpassed 3,000 and Turnipseed’s office was so swamped by them that he told the Las Vegas Business Press, “It’s beginning to look like we could have 4,000 to 5,000 protests.”
Among the protestors were the US National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Bureau of Land Management and the US Bureau of Indian Affairs.
And still Las Vegas is prevailing.
So, 20 years after the fight against Las Vegas began, when you ask any of the surviving protestors if they think that they have had a fair shot at protesting the pipeline, you may wish to forgive the tired laugh as an answer.
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