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Emily_Green

I'm pretty sure the fight is 20 years old as the claims were made in fall of 1989, but I write mainly because my impression of the event was rather different.

This very capable telling does not include what seemed to be to be decision by the SNWA board not to be forced into a High Noon situation. In the lead up to this vote, Mrs. Mulroy challenged her board to give her an up or down vote. In the meeting itself, all they did was give her permission to do what she was doing the day before, the year before and for two decades, while taking pains to repeatedly point out that this was not a vote on the pipeline.

So instead of walking away with a ringing endorsement, what Mrs. Mulroy accomplished by calling the showdown was the handing of the microphone for three hours to a group largely comprised of her critics. These critics were by and large calm, eloquent and compelling.

So what emerged was less an endorsement for Mrs. Mulroy than a talk-it-out moment. And what was notable about the talk wasn't anger but the politeness, for which many board members thanked the speakers. (These manners are a Nevada quality, I've come to believe, born from poker tables and cattle auctions, where one never gets mad publicly - and wins.) Amidst all this pregnant civility, what was striking were the lengths the board went to distance themselves from the much hyped show down aspect advertised by Mrs. Mulroy.

Mrs. Mulroy does a tough job. If anyone deserves a meltdown, she does. But in staging a public one, she opened the door in a powerful way to the arguments of her critics.

-Emily Green

The writer of the 12th blog is correct that Senator Reid did not originate SNPLMA.

Sen Richard Bryan (and then Rep John Ensign) unveiled SNPLMA in
Congress in 1996. It didn't go anywhere. The Acting Director of the
BLM testified before Congress that it enriched a few at the cost of
many. Behind the scenes, Ensign accused Reid of stymieing the bill.
But after Reid and Ensign began working together on the bill in 1997,
SNPLMA soon passed.

The purpose of the 10% of funds going to the Southern Nevada Water Authority as stated in the 1997 draft of the bill that Reid and Ensign brought before the House
Resources Committee was to "offset a $1.7 billion water delivery
system for the Las Vegas valley."

If groundwater from central, eastern Nevada is eventually pumped
south, it will flow through pipes in part paid for by SNPLMA.

At the time SNPLMA finally passed, the intent to pump Great Basin
groundwater had been embedded in Las Vegas Valley Water District's water plan for nine years, and that of its successor super agency, the Southern Nevada Water Authority, for seven.

If the plan is successful, once Great Basin ground water reaches Las
Vegas, it will not have a separate delivery system. It will go through
the Lake Mead delivery system.

Aside from the cruelty of compression, the most important reason for
going back to SNPLMA as part of Sen. Reid's story, and not as part of
Richard Bryan's or John Ensign's, is that fairly or unfairly Harry
Reid became the face of the land bills. SNPLMA only passed when Reid
took it on. SNPLMA then gave rise to successor bills, which continue funding the Southern Nevada Water Authority at the same time one of the bills instructed the Department of Interior to give the water authority right of way across federal land for the Great Basin pipeline.