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Monday, March 30, 2009 | 7:02 p.m.
Last Resort?
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The Southern Nevada Water Authority sent a letter Monday afternoon to the State Engineer asking that hearings on the Water Authority's right to pump water from Snake Valley be postponed a year.
The hearings were supposed to begin Sept. 29 and last through much of the month of October. They were expected to be contentious, with fierce opposition from farmers, ranchers and conservationists from affected Nevada and Utah counties.
The Water Authority has asked to pump more than 50,000 acre feet -- about 16 billion gallons -- of water a year from the valley that lies about 250 miles north of Las Vegas in Nevada and across the Utah border.
The agency already has received permission from the state engineer's office to pump 40,000 acre feet from Spring Valley and 18,755 acre feet from Cave, Dry Lake and Delamar valleys to provide Las Vegas water that the Authority says may be needed in the event of a prolonged drought. An acre foot of water is equivalent to 325,851 gallons.
The Water Authority would like to postpone the Snake Valley hearings because it will not be able to complete in time a computer model that shows the impact of the water removal, Deputy General Manager Kay Brothers said in the letter sent Monday.
The problem, said Water Authority spokesman J.C. Davis, is that the same model is being developed for the Water Authority's application to the Bureau of Land Management. BLM has been slow to respond to questions the Water Authority needs answered in order to proceed with the model, Davis said.
"We thought we could get this model done in time, but you have to send out parameters for review and it's just gotten bogged down at the BLM," Davis said. "As a result, we don't have this product built. We can't finish it until they tell us what they want and it's taking a lot longer than we want."
According to Davis, if the request is granted it will not impact the project because the Water Authority expects the BLM environmental review process to take longer than the State Engineer process, even with the delay.
"We can't build anything until we're done with the Environmental Impact Statement anyway," Davis said. "It's not going to hold up the show if we get this continuance."
Groups opposed to the $3.5 billion pipeline project had been rapidly working to assemble experts and hone their strategy in time for the September hearings.
"We thought we had a really, really good case for the September hearings based on the credibility and strength of the experts we had assembled," said Launce Rake, spokesman for the Progressive Leadership Alliance. "I don't think in the end a delay is going to make a big difference."
But Rake viewed the request as a sign that the opposition's perspective may be gaining some ground.
"I think there's an indication that there are second thoughts about the whole project," he said.
The Water Authority's (oxymoron) surreptitious buying of ranches (to then let them lay fallow) in outlying counties - not to mention crossing state lines - for the purpose of appropriating their water rights and pumping said liquid gold back to Las Vegas is a VERY contentious subject!
In Lincoln county alone, the practice has changed the whole complexion of once privately-held parcels, and all because of this outrageous concept. Who is Clark County to back-door an almost 'eminent domain' assertion when it comes to robbing other county's and jurisdiction's natural resources?
Water is not the property of any government entity, but belongs to the people who live on the land above it.
SNWA pleads for time? They've had 20 years to model the damages they'd do and prove up on their water mining scam. If they're not up to the fight, then they ought to do the honorable thing and withdraw their applications. And get about apologizing to the citizens of Clark County for wasting their money and start working on better alternatives to provide water for a hopefully maturing city coming to grips with the obvious imperative to plan rationally and honestly for sustainable, quality growth.
Too many people in las vegas valley. Most need to go back to the midwest or wherever they are from. This valley cannot sustain the levels of growth that have been forced on it. Game over LV.
This 3.5 billion dollar project is just one more goofy attempt at hiding the real problem that faces Southern Nevada.
Pat Mulroy will tell you can't stop the building- ... but the truth is in 1992 the SNWA stopped issuing any hook-ups for 30 days when they first took over the management of the water supply in order to get a handle on growth. Pat Mulroy was part of that management team.
It is time to find a new water management team before we find ourselves in a place where this in NO WATER TO MANAGE.
The SNWA has used or misused its power and influence to cover up a stream of bad decisions about the future of the water resources that they are in charge of.
First was the 300 million dollar project in Arizona-
Remember the big 1.2 million acre feet of emergency water stored under ground in Arizona. But, wait we can only get to 200,000 acre feet per year and only if the Lake is healthy. What kind of emergency plan was this?
Second was 400 million dollar water basin in California-
It was suppose to capture lost water in California and then trade it for real water from Lake Mead. If the lake goes dry, this project would not work either. We won't mention that Clark County tax payers were required to pay double the amount of money per reclaimed acre feet than California and Arizona tax payers. Who negotiated that deal?
Third is the 800 million dollar drain pipe in Lake Mead.
This project will be completed in 2014 and will allow SNWA to take out the last drop in the lake. But since our drinking water is dependent on recycling Clark Counties non-drinkable water back into the lake in order to produce drinkable water the drain will serve no purpose at all.
SNWA says this 3.5 billion dollar pipeline will produce an additional 50,000 acre feet of water per year in a system that uses almost 500,000 acre feet each year. Which means this pipeline will supply the county with an estimated 10% increase in water, while the lake which provides 90% of the water goes dry. So how is this project going to save Clark County?
Why don't we take that 3.5 billion dollars and buy up all the land that have building permits already issued to the developers. Which would keep developers from loosing their money (just think of it as our own toxic assets). Next we institute a four year moratorium on any new home construction or until we can build a set of reservoirs in the state to hold our share of the Colorado River water so we are not dependent on the lake for our survival. Then resale those toxic assets back to developers and home builders when we secure our own water surplus.
We need new leadership.... sorry Pat
There is a lot of talk about the looming water shortages in the American southwest and the pipe line from central Nevada to the Vegas valley.
The biggest question of this idea is cost and how long will the aquafier last?
I think there is a better source of water available for the Southwest... The Mississippi river .. if the major players in our area, both public and private were to combine their efforts and do a study on the feasibility of a pipeline connecting a series of reserviors across the arid regions I believe there would be a consensus on its viability.
Expensive? Of course it would be ,but there is enough water going out to sea every day to support millions of new residents and the towns that would spring up around the reservoirs.
If such a pipeline/s followed Interstate hwys 10 and/or 40 right of ways, the cost and impact of such a project would be significantly reduced.
10% of the average daily flow of Mississippi river flow at New Orleans is 50 billion gallons of water per day,approx 40,000 acre ft.per day!
Could the country that built such projects as the Panama canal turn the desert into an economic bonanza that would rival some of Americas most prosperous growth spurts?
Does anyone remember the Columbia River diversion plan from the '80s?
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Wash...