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 …
“A hero named Pat”
One way to write your own history in an heroic guise is to follow suit of the Las Vegas Public Education Foundation’s curiously Soviet tradition of immortalizing city players in children’s books, then placing copies in every public school. Southern Nevada Water Authority general manager Pat Mulroy was the latest in the “hero” series honoring local burghers. Many thanks to the Great Basin Water Network for the alert to this classic of its sort. “A Hero Named Pat” is a first class curiosity, but it is the works of Dr Seuss that are the subject of the upcoming Read Across America Day. For those of you who haven’t registered to take part in the National Education Association’s utterly wonderful event on March 2nd, there is still time to contact your local school and offer to read with a class. Think of the fun. Horton hears a Who! Green Eggs …
“There was never any incest”
“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. …
Gibbons to refer Las Vegas water snafu to legislature
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” …
Corks pop in Santa Barbara
“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 …
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