Las Vegas loses water rights to key valleys
IN A phenomenal reversal for Las Vegas in its 20-year quest for water from the Great Basin Aquifer, the Southern Nevada Water Authority has been stripped of rights to 18,755 acre feet of water a year, or enough for more than 37,000 homes, which it had been allocated from three key basins.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports today that Nevada District judge Norman C. Robison has ruled that the State Engineer “acted arbitrarily, capriciously and oppressively” when he cleared the authority to pump more than 6 billion gallons of groundwater a year from Cave, Delamar and Dry Lake valleys.
Above and beyond the amount of water involved, this is a crippling strategic blow to the authority. Located in neighboring Lincoln County, Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys are critical first sites* for the proposed well-fields that will feed what Las Vegas envisions as a nearly 300-mile-long pipeline…
Pipeline? What pipeline?
IF August 20th in Las Vegas proved anything, it’s what can happen when a publicity stunt backfires.
What had been hyped by a local newspaper and Pat Mulroy, general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, as an “up-or-down” vote on the Las Vegas pipeline project soon gave way to embarrassed disclaimers from members of the SNWA board. They were ”not voting upon starting to build a pipeline” assured director after director but rather “voting upon continuing a process to pursue environmental permits.”
The meeting room was packed with Nevadans there to beg the SNWA board for mercy or sing the praises of White Pine County, the place of springs and seeps that SNWA’s proposed 300-mile pipeline would tap most heavily (photos above). After 20 years of pursuing the pipeline project, SNWA general manager Pat Mulroy has the stomach to face down pudgy-cheeked, cap-in-hand octogenarian ranchers whose family farms her …
Vegas blinks
BREAKING NEWS: The much vaunted “up or down” vote on the proposed Great Basin pipeline that General Manager Pat Mulroy reportedly demanded of her board at the Southern Nevada Water Authority today descended into a long, polite and more than a little bit bizarre political retreat. Rather than confront her board to commit to the pipeline, as it was reported that Mulroy would do by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Mulroy instead asked it for permission to do what she was doing already: Cooperating with the ongoing US Bureau of Land Management environmental review process and hammering out a Snake Valley monitoring agreement.…
Heartbreak, anger in the West Desert
“DOES anyone think Southern Nevada [Water Authority] is going to build a $15 billion pipeline and then let somebody turn it off?” — Snake Valley rancher Cecil Garland, pictured above center.…
The decades that were, 1989-2009
OWING to events out of Nevada and Utah, the regular Monday feature, “The week that was” is pre-empted this week for “The decades that were.” The Southern Nevada Water Authority board meeting scheduled this week comes only two months shy of the 20th anniversary of the (then) newly appointed Las Vegas water manager Patricia Mulroy stunning Nevada with applications for half of the estimated groundwater then legally unclaimed in the state — for Las Vegas.
This Thursday, after two decades of largely unfettered growth in Greater Las Vegas, Mrs Mulroy’s board will give her an up-or-down vote on whether they wish to proceed with construction of the almost 300-mile-long pipeline, estimated cost $3.5bn, that tapping this water in five initial basins would require. To watch it live online starting at 9am, click here.
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