As we all must someday learn to do.
Andrew Kiraly reports on happenings in the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, where allegedly water exists in liquid form without immediately being applied to golf courses. Who knew such a thing was possible?
I used to wonder whether Pat Mulroy, head of a development corporation known as the Southern Nevada Water Authority, ever had plans to look beyond our state’s scraggly little borders for water — you know, long after the authority’s pipeline had turned Lincoln and White Pine counties into wizened, formerly quaint scabs to keep Southern Nevada growing. Nawwww, I thought. I mean, the water czar’s aggressive and forward-thinking — if tragically wrongheaded — and all that, but not that aggressive, forward-thinking and tragically wrongheaded, right?
Find the post here.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Keep Yucca Nuke Free!
Come join Nevada leaders and citizens at the Clark County Amphitheater for a rally against the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump. In early June, the Department of Energy plans to submit a license application to begin construction of a nuclear waste dump 90 miles away from Las Vegas. On Tuesday, May 27, we will stand together to send the Federal Government a message that Nevada is not a wasteland.
Tuesday, May 27 at 11 a.m.
Clark County Amphitheater,
500 S. Grand Central Parkway
Las Vegas, NV 89106
Open to: The public and media.
For more information about Yucca Mountain, please visit http://www.reid.senate.gov/issues/yucca.cfm
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Cecil Garland on the Las Vegas Water Grab
One of my friends up north may be a bit hard of hearing, but his senses are especially acute when it comes to the desire of developers to destroy rural Nevada - and rural Western Utah, which is threatened directly by the loss of precious groundwater and indirectly by the dust storms the Southern Nevada Water Authority wants to send to Utah.
Anyhoo, Cecil Garland used to live and work in Las Vegas but traded it in for a life on the soil. He's a heckuva cowboy poet, by the way, who says his best ideas come when he has his arm up the inside of a cow.
He's written a nice piece for the Canyon Country Zephyr out of Moab. Here's a taste:
Can it ever be justified from any moral concept to allow a precious water resource to be taken by an entity steeped in glitter, glutton, gambling, and girls from a ranching and farming community whose concerns are children, cattle, country, and church? Should the sprawl of endless construction, gaudy hotels, and gaming houses be given priority over the lives and future of we who grow hay and are pastoralists? Sooner or later the citizens of the Southwest must decide.
What will it be? Crops or craps?
Find the full story here:
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/april-may2008/water.html
Anyhoo, Cecil Garland used to live and work in Las Vegas but traded it in for a life on the soil. He's a heckuva cowboy poet, by the way, who says his best ideas come when he has his arm up the inside of a cow.
He's written a nice piece for the Canyon Country Zephyr out of Moab. Here's a taste:
Can it ever be justified from any moral concept to allow a precious water resource to be taken by an entity steeped in glitter, glutton, gambling, and girls from a ranching and farming community whose concerns are children, cattle, country, and church? Should the sprawl of endless construction, gaudy hotels, and gaming houses be given priority over the lives and future of we who grow hay and are pastoralists? Sooner or later the citizens of the Southwest must decide.
What will it be? Crops or craps?
Find the full story here:
http://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/april-may2008/water.html
Oops! Mea culpa!
A couple of weeks ago I posted a blog entry identifying the Las Vegas Valley Water District as the agency responsible for the Las Vegas Valley Water District Water Importation Project Technology Assessment, a 1990 document that essentially predicted doom for rural Nevada and choking growth for Las Vegas if the Las Vegas Water Grab goes forward.
It was amazing because it accurately predicted a number of things that have, in fact, come to pass, including the purchase of White Pine County ranches to send more water from the rural areas to the city. Also, the fact that it would wipe out endangered species, rural economies, etc.
But I erred in attributing the document to the Water District or Southern Nevada Water Authority, which now is working to defoliate rural Nevada. It was, in fact, an independent study done by Mike Baughman and Rachel Finson. Baughman, a Nevada native who remains one of the state's best known environmental analysts, at the time was working on his PhD at a Clark University.
The document remains a great touchstone for all the bad things that will happen if the Water Grab goes forward, and I hope to have an electronic version of the document for everyone (including the Water Authority employees) to reference.
It was amazing because it accurately predicted a number of things that have, in fact, come to pass, including the purchase of White Pine County ranches to send more water from the rural areas to the city. Also, the fact that it would wipe out endangered species, rural economies, etc.
But I erred in attributing the document to the Water District or Southern Nevada Water Authority, which now is working to defoliate rural Nevada. It was, in fact, an independent study done by Mike Baughman and Rachel Finson. Baughman, a Nevada native who remains one of the state's best known environmental analysts, at the time was working on his PhD at a Clark University.
The document remains a great touchstone for all the bad things that will happen if the Water Grab goes forward, and I hope to have an electronic version of the document for everyone (including the Water Authority employees) to reference.
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