The screw turns
Posted on | February 24, 2010 | 1 Comment
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 Las Vegas to draw rural groundwater for the city in 1989, and who under state law at the time should have been guaranteed a hearing in 1991, but didn’t get it until 2007, and who in early 2010 successfully convinced the Supreme Court of Nevada that they had been screwed have been screwed again.
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Tags: chance of rain > pipeline > Southern Nevada Water Authority > State Engineer
“There was never any incest”
Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 2 Comments
“Evil is elemental … It’s in the air, it’s in the sunshine, it’s in the water.” – So goes a line from New York Times film critic AO Scott in a “video pick” for Chinatown.*
Ah, cineastes. If they ever came out of their screening rooms, they would know that evil is elemental, it’s in the air, it’s in the sunshine, it’s in the water in real life. You don’t need to rent it.
While Scott’s paean was aimed more at Roman Polanski and less at water, it was well-timed. Evil has never been thicker in the world of Western water.
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Gibbons to refer Las Vegas water snafu to legislature
Posted on | February 23, 2010 | No Comments
BREAKING NEWS: The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons will refer to a special session of legislature a law repeatedly broken by the State Engineer in issuing water permits to Las Vegas. The hope of gaming and construction interests lobbying the governor is that the legislature could somehow amend state law in a way that retroactively makes legal the violation of due process rights of thousands of protestors to a multi-billion dollar pipeline proposed by Las Vegas. The pipe, planned to run almost 300 miles to the foot of the Great Basin National Park, would mine rural groundwater to sustain the suburbs and casinos of southern Nevada. For background on the governor’s stalling, click here, on the proposed legislation here, and on the pipe, here.
UPDATE: Nevadan readers who wish to e-mail, write or phone their legislators to comment on the proposed “fix” may find a directory of their assembly members and senators by clicking here.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > Jim Gibbons > Southern Nevada Water Authority
Corks pop in Santa Barbara
Posted on | February 23, 2010 | 7 Comments
“After 18 years as head of the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden, Edward Schneider is leaving for a job at the University of Minnesota, where he will become a fully tenured professor and take over as director of the arboretum,” reports the Santa Barbara Independent. Schneider leaves California’s most important native garden without half of its volunteers and all of its status. For background on his directorship, and that of his board led by former Arizona governor turned pastry chef Fife Symington III, click here and here.
A personal theory as to why Schneider and his board were so disastrous for the garden can be summed up in the difference between two terms: “arboretum” and “botanic garden.” Arboretums are collections, originally of trees, and often occupy the estates of some dead robber baron. They represent the plunder and show ethos of a bygone era in which exoticism was the prize and native flora a weedy background.
By God, we’re green
Posted on | February 22, 2010 | No Comments
THE League of Conservation Voters today issued its Environmental Score Card for 2009. The good news: The 111th Congress is so far better than the 110th.
The bad? See for yourself, however drink before reading if you don’t believe that attempting the upend the Endangered Species Act, or running a pipeline to the foot of the Great Basin National Park entitles a politician to a perfect score.
Tags: chance of rain > Emily Green > League of Conservation Voters > scorecard
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