Development News | New West Network

The Waiting Game

By Christian Probasco, Unfiltered 10-13-06

Once, long ago, while I was conversing in the elementary school cafeteria with an acquaintance who was developing important life skills, he stealthily reached up and snatched the candy bar I was about to eat from the tabletop in front of me and I only barely caught the motion of his hand from the periphery of my vision. If he had been successful, he would have achieved what Las Vegas is now attempting to do to rural Nevada. Here’s the talking/distracting part of it, what Patricia Mulroy, General Manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority is saying to the counties she wants to suck water out of, as relayed by Utah Public Radio’s Access Utah:

“The days of winners and losers, which is a phrase that I heard emanating out of the state of California when I first started in this business, are over. That’s not our ethic. When we enter an area where we partner with somebody, then we assume partial responsibility for their future as well. That to me is responsible water development….We are the stewards of the environment, whether we like it or not. We can’t just take blindly.”

While discoursing so, Las Vegas already has its hand on the candy bar. It filed a slew of claims all over this, the driest state in the nation, back in the eighties and now it wants to take advantage of them. The current plan is to connect Las Vegas to untapped water resources in White Pine and Lincoln Counties and possibly western Utah via a huge pipeline they contend will only cost two billion dollars, but which will probably end up costing far more.

SNWA says that if that if the counties involved believe the water table is being drawn down too much, Las Vegas will switch the spigot off. They argued their case in a series of hearings held in Carson City a few weeks back to elicit all the relevant facts and testimony so State Engineer Tracy Taylor could decide on the disposition of the unused groundwater, which legally belongs to the state. Says John Hiatt, conservation chairman of Las Vegas’ Red Rock Audubon Society:

“The SNWA is playing a game. They’re telling these counties, ‘if you don’t make a deal you’re going to get screwed’….But once the pipeline is installed it’s going to be exceedingly difficult to tell municipal users, ‘we’re turning off your water.’”

Hiatt compares the current crisis to the turn-of-the-century “rape” of the Owens Valley, wherein Los Angeles secretly bought all the water rights in that unsuspecting, idyllic little farmland and drained it to smithereens, drying up most of its springs, seeps and marshes and transforming the one-hundred square mile Owens Lake into the single largest point source of dust pollution in the country.

SNWA is vehemently against anyone drawing that kind of parallel. “…Part of our objective in developing these water supplies in Lincoln and White Pine County,” says Mulroy, “is to once and for all relegate Owens Valley to its rightful place in history with the dinosaur and the cave-man.”

Not included or even considered in that process is the possibility of dropping the whole scheme. And that’s because Las Vegas is up against a wall. The Water Authority tried renegotiating the 1922 Colorado River Water Compact, arrived at in one of the wettest cycles on record and since proven to be “optimistic” as to average river volumes, but the other members of the compact seem to be satisfied with their slices of the pie. SNWA is also paying Vegas land owners to tear out their turf grass lawns and replace them with less water-intensive landscaping. But that measure will only go so far towards alleviating the pressure Vegas’ exploding population is putting on its water resources.

Vegas could take part of California’s allotment and pay them back with water from desalination plants to be built on the coast, but that would be expensive. Hiatt cautions that even with advances in technology, “there’s always going to be a big, irreducible thermodynamic energy cost associated with removing salt from sea water. And where will the energy come from? Nuclear power?” The irony here being Nevada’s stalwart resistance to Washington’s schemes for dumping the nation’s spent nuclear fuel rods at Yucca Mountain.

Nobody knows exactly what the effect of the pipeline on the water table in White Pine County will be. Nobody is even certain how much water the aquifer holds and which direction it flows. The federal government, whose interior agencies dropped their initial objections to the project just before the hearing, is expected to complete two studies on the subject soon, one of them a review of earlier studies, neither of them definitive. SNWA, predictably, forecasts little or no drawdown and no damage to any ecosystem anywhere. Their opponents--farmers, ranchers, environmentalists and the Mormon Church, which holds vulnerable property in Spring Valley, targeted for drilling--see the city “mining” the available water into oblivion.

Spearheading the coalition against the pipeline is Bob Fulkerson of the Nevada Progressive Leadership Alliance or PLAN. His opinion on the recent hearings: “We presented a strong case that the water isn’t there in the volumes SNWA says it is. They had an incredibly weak case, which boiled down to, ‘there are more of us and we want it.’ There were also a lot of parallels to the ‘inevitability’ argument we saw with Yucca Mountain—that they were going to get it eventually anyway.”

Fulkerson was “very impressed” with Tracy Taylor, who he says “asked some sharp questions” and “demonstrated a deep commitment to science and hydrology.”

Taylor’s mandate, according to Hiatt, will be to “craft a decision that not only meets the requirements of the law but is legally defensible.” If he were to decide against the scheme, cash-rich Vegas could lease part of another state’s allotment of the Colorado River or it could begin seriously conserving its water, in which case the first step, according to Hiatt, would be to draw Nevada’s allocation of the river down to its legal limits, which he foresees causing “great gnashing of teeth.” Fulkerson believes that Vegas could use Tucson, which sips water, as a template in this regard. “If Vegas were to emulate Tucson’s level of conservation, it would save as much water as the pipeline would bring in,” he says.

So why not just buy off the concerned parties? Lincoln County has already made a deal wherein it dropped its objections to SNWA’s applications in exchange for a share of the water coming down the pipeline. Representatives of White Pine County, on the other hand, have so far shown no interest in working with the Authority. “They’re saying their future is not for sale,” explains Fulkerson, “They’re not willing to make a deal with the devil.”

Taylor’s decision may take months and, as Hiatt says, “no matter what he decides, it can be appealed by both parties.” Mulroy, meanwhile, has alluded to the possibility of removing Taylor from office if his decision isn’t favorable to southern Nevada.

Now a disclaimer: I’ve already voted for the pipeline by living in Henderson, right next to Las Vegas. If I had money, however, I’d put it on White Pine County. But if I were rational I’d put it on Vegas. Why? Because Sin City is the goose that lays the golden eggs; it’s the economic powerhouse of the state, and there will be tremendous pressure on every decision maker to provide it with whatever it needs to keep growing. And because it has lady luck and two proverbs on its side, one western, one universal: “water flows uphill to money,” and “them that has gets.”

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.

Like to receive our print magazine, The New West? Click here for free subscription information.

By Christian Probasco, New West Unfiltered, 10-13-06 | comments (2) | email story | print story

[+ My Yahoo] | [+ My Google] | [+ del.icio.us] | [+ DiggIt!]