Shock doctrine, Mulroy style
CRITICS of the Las Vegas pipeline proposed for the Great Basin will find almost every argument they’ve made in 20 years of protesting the project distilled in one witty, furious burst in today’s Aguanomics posting by UC Berkeley natural resources economist David Zetland.
Zetland whipped it out on the news earlier today that Utah has finally complied with Nevadan demands for Great Basin groundwater. This follows a dare last week by Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Patricia Mulroy (pictured above, click on the photos for captions) to her board to vote against the pipeline.
Mulroy predicted empty hydrants and water once a week if they didn’t come to heel.
Beware of shock doctrine tactics, argues Zetland.
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Utah concedes to Nevada water demands in draft agreement
BREAKING NEWS: Utah and Nevada today produced a draft agreement for the splitting of groundwater from the shared basin of Snake Valley.
Since making the single largest block of groundwater claims in Nevadan history in 1989, Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Patricia Mulroy has been seeking Snake Valley groundwater, along with reserves from four other target basins, to feed a 300-mile-long pipeline proposed to tap the Great Basin Carbonate Aquifer. Snake Valley is the second most water-rich valley in the Las Vegas pipeline plan.…
Makeover city
SOME acronyms exist merely to make us sound drunk. The city of Long Beach’s BLBL is one. But what the Beautiful Long Beach Landscapes program lacks in mellifluousness, it makes up for in success. BLBL is a key part of a drive that has cut Long Beach water use by 16.5% since fall 2007.
To read today’s Dry Garden column on Long Beach’s raffle for makeovers in the newly redesigned Los Angeles Times online edition, click on I dig it. Wow, I mean, talk about makeovers!…
Free the flowers
IF YOU follow gardening in the Los Angeles Times or Los Angeles Magazine or LA Weekly, chances are, you’ve heard of Tara Kolla, recently dubbed Los Angeles Magazine’s “Best Urban Farmer Guru.”
After the jump, Kolla makes her case for a Food and Flowers Freedom Act. If it sounds silly, it might be, but so are some of our zoning ordinances here in Los Angeles.
Kolla is pursuing the act because her urban flower garden, Silver Lake Farms, was nearly run out of business last spring by a litigious neighbor who took exception to the idea that Kolla was growing flowers to sell.
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David Zetland on political influence, insider trading and Cadiz
DAVID ZETLAND, the Berkeley-based water economist and publisher of Aguanomics, today follows up on Cadiz’s June 5 stock surge and the market position of Cadiz CEO Keith Brackpool: Who knew what when in advance of the Cadiz-issued endorsements of the Cadiz groundwater project by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rep. Jim Costa (D-Fresno) and San Bernardino County Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt?
“What intrigues me is that Brackpool took options on 60,000 shares on May 22,” Zetland writes. “They were worth about $400,000 then and about $750,000 two weeks later. (He only had 90,000 shares before exercising that option. Was it “in the money”? Did he sell those shares?…)”
“Bottom Line,” Zetland writes, “It’s fine to buy and sell water to make a profit. It’s NOT fine to use political influence to change the value of your water trading …
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